I found two capitalization stock certificates once. From 1900. Start-up stock for an Alaskan oil venture. I pictured a hundred stock splits, mergers with Texaco, Exxon, and so on, so I paid to have the trace done. They were payable to the bearer, so while I waited for the results of the search I got fairly paranoid. After all, I could have been sitting on a billion dollars worth of oil stocks. I wondered if the tracing company was going to send out a hit team to kill me and steal the stocks.

Today I can't even recall what I did with those worthless scraps.

Good luck.

Ugly story about the manuscripts. People (like the "caretaker") never cease to amaze me.