Best Purchase Ever

My wife hangs on to things for a long time. Recently however, she decided that she could toss out some old canceled checks. Doing so turned out to be a walk down memory lane. Eventually she came across the  check seen above. It's written to a brokerage firm somewhere in New Jersey. So, in 1989, I bought 100 shares of Apple stock (AAPL). The stock was $35/share with a $35 commission. I'm not sure why my wife wrote the check. After holding the stock for 12 years, it was worth about half what I paid for it. That's about when the iPod showed up. Things got better.

I was wondering about the security of having a bank name along with an account number posted on the internet. Probably not a problem. New Jersey National Bank was established in 1804 and hung around for a long time till Reagan came in and messed with the banking system (remember the Savings & Loan debacle?). New Jersey National Bank was acquired by Corestates sometime just before the check was written. Seven years later, Corestates was acquired by First Union National Bank which became Wachovia which (remember those credit default swaps?) was acquired by Wells Fargo in a fire sale.