Southern California Edison Deal Toy: Museum Object and Cultural History

The object in the museum catalogue

This is a "tombstone" or “deal toy” that was used to commemorate the closing of a major business deal. As the influence of the financial sector and the size of deals grew, deal toys often became more elaborate and colorful, as shown in this surfboard toy. This toy commemorates the Southern California Edison power company selling five hundred million dollars of first mortgage bonds at 5.75%. The 200 series bonds had a trade date of October 7th and a settlement date of October 15, 2008 with payments on the bond due in March and September. The principal was to be paid on March 15th, 2014, and the security was given and A rating by Standard & Poor’s.

The base of the toy is made to look like sand, and the yellow surfboard reads “The Riding The Credit Market Waves / October 2008 / Southern California Edison / $500,000,000 / 5.75% First Mortgage Bonds due March 15, 2014 / Joint Book Running Managers / Bank of America / Citi / Deutsche Bank / J.P. Morgan.”

Materials, dates and provenance

• Object Name: deal toy
• Physical Description: green (overall color)
• Physical Description: white (overall color)
• Physical Description: plastic (overall material)
• Physical Description: yellow (overall color)
• Measurements: overall: 8 5/8 in x 3 7/8 in x 2 1/2 in; 21.9075 cm x 9.8425 cm x 6.35 cm
• ID Number: 2014.0092.01
• catalog number: 2014.0092.01
• accession number: 2014.0092
• Credit Line: Gift of Edison International
• Data Source: National Museum of American History

Sources and reuse

Catalogue descriptions and facts adapted from National Museum of American History through the Smithsonian's official Open Access dataset. This record explicitly marks its metadata CC0 1.0; formatting and selection have been changed.