Giving the Gift of One Share

Shannon at Rocks in My Dryer is asking people to share their favorite internet shopping sites. My favorite, hands down, is Amazon.com, but several have already covered that one well. Phyllis' post, in particular, was a great summary of some of Amazon's cool features.

Since I'm not writing about my favorite shopping site, I'll write about one of the most unique one's I've used: OneShare.com. OneShare allows you to give a single share of stock as a gift. They offer dozens of stock choices, including companies like Disney, Yahoo, McDonald's, Harley Davidson, and Martha Stewart. This allows you the great fun of picking out a company to match the gift receipient.

OneShare sends you the actual stock certificate and some of them are quite interesting. The one pictured in this post is DreamWorks Animation and features Shrek. I chose this stock for my 12 year-old son's last birthday. He has an interest in the stock market and I thought this would be a great way to nurture it. His stock certificate came with a booklet entitled Stock Matters for Kids, which OneShare is still offering on their website.

Now I feel obligated to point out that OneShare is not the most cost effective means of buying stock. You'll pay for the stock itself, and then you'll also pay a $39 transfer fee, which is essentially paying for the actual stock certificate, which you don't normally get in a traditional stock transaction. So if you're buying stock for investment purposes, OneShare is definitely not the way to go. If, however, you're looking for a unique gift idea, OneShare is something you need to check out!