This share of 500 francs of the Houillères de Long-Pendu, a partnership limited by shares, issued in Paris on 15 June 1840, is the oldest piece in this entire new scripophily collection. Issued under the July Monarchy (reign of Louis-Philippe I, 1830-1848), this document belongs to the early days of the French industrial revolution, at a time when the coal industry was beginning to be structured along modern capitalistic lines. The partnership limited by shares was then the most widespread legal form for large enterprises, before the generalization of public limited companies under the 1867 law. Long-Pendu is a locality in Saône-et-Loire, in the Blanzy/Montceau-les-Mines coal basin. The share of 500 francs, a considerable sum in 1840 (equivalent to several months of a worker's wages), was reserved for bourgeois or aristocratic investors. The typography of this document is characteristic of the 1840s: sober, functional, with the legal formulas of the partnership. This 1840 certificate is a precious and rare collector's item, bearing witness to the origins of the French Burgundian coal industry.