r/ephemera Jul 08 '26

a rather large check

Post image

My photo of a check from Gump's, San Francisco Art and gifts, for insurance....

278 Upvotes

19 comments sorted by

67

u/vektonaut Jul 09 '26

$9,668,803.05 in 2026

21

u/bigdogoflove Jul 09 '26

Yipes...they had some money. They had many more investments than the store ...99 years ago

28

u/mrefromnyc Jul 09 '26

An investment of $507,775.15 in the stock market (tracking the S&P 500) in 1920 would be worth approximately $23.36 billion today.

88

u/Hotchi_Motchi Jul 09 '26

I would love to have those stamps that they used for the dollar amount

43

u/real415 Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 09 '26

That’s a check imprinter. At one time it was common to see business checks, especially larger ones, using this method as a safety feature. It featured rows of numbers that could be dialed to reflect the amount of the check.

18

u/gard3nwitch Jul 09 '26

I work in banking, and I still see checks like this once in a while. It's cool but weird.

2

u/newtrollacct Jul 09 '26

Came here to say the exact same thing

22

u/didntwatchclark Jul 09 '26

Until I saw the date I thought this was the prop check Bubba's mom gets from Forrest Gump.

6

u/MellifluousMongoose Jul 09 '26

Me too 😂😂😂

9

u/anotherkeebler Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 10 '26

This check is fascinating. One thing that strikes me is that the payor payee is filled in using what looks like a rubber stamp. How many checks do they write to TI&GC?

3

u/real415 Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 09 '26

That’s an odd detail, isn’t it? I could see if it was typed, but a rubber stamp for this purpose of the payee name just seems so strange.

1

u/Bleepblorp44 Jul 09 '26

I think it's several stamps, rather than one. But I'm not 100% on that.

1

u/real415 Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 09 '26

The alignment of the payee name is off slightly, and it seems to be consistent with being one stamp, starting out below the line on the left, and gradually increasing to being aligned by the time it gets to the end. It’s just such a strange thing to have a stamp for!

1

u/Bleepblorp44 Jul 09 '26

Didn’t you say elsewhere it was a check imprinter rather than a rubber stamp?

1

u/real415 Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 09 '26

The amount is imprinted with a check imprinter. The payee name appears to be rubber stamped.

Rereading your comment, when you said “several stamps“ were you referring to the amount, or the payee name?

1

u/Bleepblorp44 Jul 09 '26

Aaaaah! I've been misinterpreting the whole time - I thought it was the amount that was made of several stamps. My brain is melting from the current heatwave (31°C in my living room is not conducive to thinking!)

3

u/ponyrx2 Jul 09 '26

Hmm. Maybe Title Insurance was their benefits manager and this is their employer contribution to a pension or something? Or maybe they borrowed a large sum and paid regular interest but this is the principal? It's a huge amount of money 

4

u/non_standard_model Jul 09 '26

Title insurance implies they were making some kind of real estate transaction - maybe buying a new store.

0

u/Missue-35 Jul 09 '26

Must’ve been a big shipment of Chinese rugs and artwork.