Business Source Complete (EBSCO) - Full text of over 8,800 magazines, newspapers and journals, including more than 1,100 peer-reviewed journals. Also includes some market research reports, SWOT analyses, and country reports.

Mergent Online - Extensive information on 11,000 U.S. and 17,000 international companies, including financials, stock, properties, joint ventures, annual reports, subsidiaries, S.E.C. filings, etc. For search tips, see About Mergent Online.[Database description]

Bloomberg - Bloomberg is an online database available only on a dedicated Bloomberg workstation, providing 24-hour current and historical financial quotes, commodity market and economic statistics, business newswires, and descriptive information, research and statistics on over 52,000 companies worldwide. In the Foster Business Library, the Bloomberg workstation is located in the Electronic Reference Area.

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission: - Short, concise article referencing several resources for assessing the value of stock certificates.

Washington State Department of Financial Institutions, Securities Division: - This web page provides information pertaining to stocks issued by Washington State corporations.

Collectible Stocks and Bonds: - The hobby of collecting old stocks and bonds is called "Scripophily." It has grown substantially as electronic trading eliminates paper certificates. Check this web site to see if your old stock certificate no longer has investment value but is a collector's item.

Goldsheet Obsolete Securities: - Extensive list of print resources, state agencies, and commercial services relating to obsolete securities.

Scripophily.com: - A commercial site specializing in the selling of old stock and bond certificates, notable for its collection of images of obsolete securities.

Stock and Bond Auction Company: - Interactive auction website devoted exclusively to the collecting of "antique stocks and bonds and related paraphernalia."

Fee-based commercial web sites that provide research on old stock and bond certificates, such as:

Yahoo! Finance: - This site is a good source for company and investment information as well as an excellent source for historical stock prices. Search for stock by ticker symbol and chose the option for historical stock prices. For expired ticker symbols, this site is not useful; in such cases, print resources may be the only recourse.

The corporate acquisition guide - This older ring binder provides information on corporate acquisitions from 1881 to 1997.
Foster Business Library Reference, Call Number: HD2746.55 .U5 .C67 1997.

Mergent company archives manual - 2,700 U.S. companies that merged, were acquired, went bankrupt or became private companies from 1996 to 2000.
Foster Business Library Reference, Call number: HD2746.55 .U5 .M466 2001.

Mergent company archives manual supplement - 1,500 U.S. companies that merged, were acquired, went bankrupt or became private companies since 2001.
Foster Business Library Reference, Call number: HD2746.55 .U5 .M466 2002.

Directory of obsolete securities - This large older volume covers banks and companies whose original identities were lost due to name changes, mergers, acquisition, dissolution, etc.
Foster Business Library Reference, Call Number: HG4961 .D56 1994.

Capital changes reporter - This large black multi-volume ring binder, published by CCH, "provides the facts and figures to compute a security holder’s gain or loss from capital changes." It covers "over 58,000 corporations in a database that spans over 100 years."
Foster Business Library Reference, Call Number: KF1428 .A6 .C65 (updated regularly)

The Foster Business Library collections do not include one of the main reference works for this topic, available at many public libraries in the area:

Robert D. Fisher manual of valuable and worthless securities - This set of over a dozen volumes is available locally at the King County Library System and at the Seattle Public Library.

In the case of companies that have changed ticker symbols, merged, been acquired or gone out of business, finding daily stock price closings is more complicated; print sources must be consulted since this information typically disappears from web sources. The sources below include daily volume, high, low and closing prices.

Try:

Daily stock price record.
Foster Business Library Reference, Call number: HG4915 .I23 (Quarterly) for the NYSE, back to 1972;
Foster Business Library Reference,Call number: HG4915. I22 (Quarterly) for the ASE, back to 1972;
Foster Business Library Reference, Call number: HG4915. I24 (Quarterly) for the NASDAQ, back to 1993.

For earlier daily stock prices, see:

ISL daily stock price index.
Foster Business Library Reference Serials, Call number: HG4915 .I23 (Quarterly) for the NYSE, from 1961 to 1972;
Foster Business Library Reference Serials, Call number: HG4915. I22 (Quarterly) for the ASE, from 1962 to 1972;

Daily stock price index, over-the-counter.
Foster Business Library Reference Serials, Call number: HG4915. I24 (Quarterly), from 1972 to 1992.

ISL daily stock price index, over-the-counter.
Foster Business Library Reference Serials, Call number: HG4915. I24 (Quarterly), from 1968 to 1972.

For older stock prices, the only source is often in the microfilm backfiles of the Wall Street Journal, located in the UW Libraries' Microform & Newspaper Collections.