Where can I find daily closing prices SINCE jANUARY 1, 2000 for
publicly traded companies whose stock is no longer traded: K-Mart
PRIOR TO Chapter 11 and SmithKline Beecham PRIOR TO merger into
GlaxoWelcom. Both companies
were listed on the NYSE under symbols which no longer appear in any of
the historical stock price data bases.

Ritafan --

There are two excellent online guides, put together by reference
librarians, which outline virtually ALL of the sources of stock price
information.  Both are very complete, though you'll have to work with
your local librarian to find out what's available from which library
resource.  As an example, the Lippincott Library link -- which has
VERY well-organized links -- mentions the University of Chicago's CRSP
or Center for Research in Security Prices.  While very complete and
widely used, it's generally only available in university research
libraries.

Here are the two best sources for where to look, then I'll outline a
way to find stock prices that is probably the easiest:

Illinois State Library
"Stock Answers: Finding Historical Stock Prices" (November, 2002)
by Nell Ingalls
http://www.sls.lib.il.us/reference/por/features/99/stock.html

University of Pennsylvania Lippincott Library
"Stock Prices: Where to Find #4"
Teresa Terry
http://gethelp.library.upenn.edu/guides/business/stockprices.html


THE NEW YORK TIMES
-------------------

Google Answers researchers get frequent historical questions and one
of the best databases is the New York Times newspaper archive, which
is available via a full text search back to 1851.  While a fee-based
service called Proquest Historical Newspapers offers the NY Times, it
is available at most public libraries.

For your purposes, it would be best to know the date that K Mart and
SmithKline Beecham were de-listed, which will save search time in the
NY Times index.  You may be able to find those dates listed at the SEC
Edgar database:
SEC
"EDGAR Database"
http://www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/webusers.htm

Once in the NY Times database, I'd recommend the following steps:
1.	search by date (MM/DD/YYYY)
2.	use the search string: stock quote  (this is how the NY Times lists
its stock tables)
3.	now use the "page image" to look at the entire page -- scanning to
find your stock
4.	the NY Times always lists NYSE issues first; preferred stocks
second; AMEX stocks third; NASDAQ trades fourth

Unfortunately, it's difficult to do a text search on company name or
ticker symbol, as the NY Times frequently abbreviates company names. 
For Jan. 3, 2000 stock quotes in its summary of 1999 trading, the NY
Times has the two companies listed as:

---------- Yr Hi ----- Yr Lo ---- Yr Close ---- Change
K Mart………… 18 5/8 ………. 9 1/16 ……… 10 3/16 ………… - 5 1/4
SmithBch…… 76 3/8 ………. 56 1/16 …… 64 7/8 …………  - 5 3/8


A second check of the NY Times, on Jan. 14, 2001, shows that only K
Mart is still trading on the NYSE.  Note that the stock exchanges now
have switched from fractional quotes to decimals:

-----------  Hi ----  Lo ------ Close ----- Change
K Mart………….. 7.19 ……… 6.13  ………. 6.81 ……….  +0.31


Of course, once delisted, stocks may trade on over-the-counter markets
via so-called "pink sheet" trades.  Pink sheets cover OTC stocks where
capitalization is small or where trades are infrequent (sometimes only
a handful in a year).


Google search strategy:
"stock prices" + historical
"stock prices" + "pink sheets"

Best regards,

Omnivorous-GA

After being frustrated by being unable to access the numerous
subscriber-only libraries for historical stock price data, I simply
used the Researcher's final tip about structuring my own Google search
("stock prices" + historical) and I found www.123jump.com which gave
me daily open, high, low, close quotes for SBH and KM - both of which
were dropped by the other standard reference sources since SmithKline
Beecham is now a part of Glaxo (GSK) and K-Mart post-Chapter 11 is now
KMRT. Thanks for the very detailed answer.