How to sell paper shares?

Hoping someone out there can help with this as I’ve been reading up but none the wiser.

I have a small (£1000) amount of paper shares that I’m looking to sell. Was hoping for a walk into branch, hand over paper, get money type of arrangement. seems it’s not quite as easy as that.

Anyone got any insight into the best way to do this and to minimise fee’s. I’m in no rush to sell but the price is quite good at the mo and I could use the cash for other projects.

Ta.

Open an online share trading account, deposit paper certs into online account (called dematerialising shares), sell online when time is right.

Not many stockbrokers left doing certificated trading these days and the charges are high, especially in comparison to electronic trading.

Yep as Rondo says.

I use Hargreaves Lansdown – only £12 a trade if you are only trading infrequently, but you do have to keep £50 in the account to avoid a closure fee

If you don’t want to fanny around with opening an account and risk the price dropping while the shares are deposited… the registrar (will most likely be either computershare, equiniti or capita), will probably offer online sharedealing for UK certificated holdings. Just make sure it’s an actual certicate you have and not a statement of holdings. Don’t forget to send them the certificate when they ask for it. No certificate=no money (and an expensive buy back)

Also make sure the certificate is valid before you trade (call the registrar, number will be in the back of the certificate)

I work in the industry and have seen a lot of cert deals go tits up.

Iirc cash settlement is still 10 working days after trading for cert trades

i’ve opened an online account with HL. so I send them the shares and they, for want of a better expression, digitalise them ready for when the time is right to sell?

Pretty much, although be aware that the process of ‘dugutalising’ involves checking against a register that the certificates are still valid.

There’s a possibility someone previously may have been unable to locate those certificates, and paid for replacements – which would invalidate yours if it has happened.

If the certificates gave always been yours, and you know there’s never been an attempt to trade them you can ignore the above barring bizarre identity theft scenarios.

You’ll need to send a transfer form with the cert.

https://www.hl.co.uk/investment-services/fund-and-share-account/open-a-fund-and-share-account/share-account-transfer

Best send it recorded, if the cert goes missing it’ll be costly to replace.

i’ve opened an online account with HL. so I send them the shares and they, for want of a better expression, digitalise them ready for when the time is right to sell?

Yep

info on how to do it on this page

http://www.hl.co.uk/funds/transferring-your-existing-investments

Cool. thanks guys. Yes the shares have always been mine and as far as I’m aware they’re the actual certs I have.

Didn’t ask what stock it was Blazin, just assumed it was a UK company. If they’re overseas certs you might not be able to anything outlined above!

Yes UK. Cheers.