On October 3, 1929, John D. Rockefeller sold his right to one-quarter of a new seat on the New York Stock Exchange for $125,000. Only a few days before, on September 26, 1929, J.P. Morgan and Junius S. Morgan, Jr. had sold their rights for the same price. These represented the highest real price that would ever be paid for a seat on the exchange. Like other members of the exchange, Rockefeller and the Morgans had received these rights on February 18, 1929, as part of a plan to expand the capacity of the exchange and meet the flood of orders that flowed from the stock market boom. While not active brokers, they, like at least another hundred wealthy men, reserved the option to appear on the floor of the exchange to intervene directly in the market if a merger, proxy fight or perhaps a panic loomed. These titans of industry and finance could have sold their rights at any time beforehand, but they had held on to them. Their sales seem to have been extraordinarily well-timed. The Dow Jones had reached its peak on September 3, 1929, and then began a slow decline. Rockefeller and the Morgans sold as the boom deflated and just ahead of the collapses on Black Thursday October 24 and Black Tuesday October 29, 1929, when the market lost 23 percent of its value.