The pain in the butt Drano was speaking about - holding your shares in certificate form - means you will have to bring the certificates to a broker, endorse them (there are forms - stock powers - to do that by mail) so they can go into street name, and go thru a process whereby the broker verifies they are in fact yours and are not counterfeit.

If shares are jointly held and your wife is with her mother in Egypt, your wife would have had to pre-sign some of the stock power forms for you to use. This is compared to just either you or your wife entering the transaction online or calling the broker.

This is a gigantic pain if you want to sell them quickly. One of the lessons I learned in my 20s. (or for Drano, IN the 1920's)