Expert: Steven Taylor - 3/30/2009

Question
QUESTION: my father just found a certificate from aug, 12 1952 for 1000 shrs of "paymaster consolidated mines limited". do they have any value and do you know who the current trustee or transfer agent is if the have nay value..

ANSWER: Michael, from the information I have available, it appears there might be some value involved.

Paymaster went through several mergers and name changes and some associated reverse splits. It did a 1 for 3 reverse stock split, then a merger of 1 new for 3.57196 old. Taking those into account, it would be 93 new common shares at the time of acquisition by American Reserve Mining. That merger was $5 per share cash and 0.75 of a common share of American Reserve common share per common share of what was then Associated Porcupine. American Reserve later did a 1 for 16 reverse stock split and became AMI Resources, which is still around. AMI is trading at 4 1/2 cents per share. Therefore, the real value is in the cash from the American Reserve merger.

If your father never received the cash at the time of the merger in 1989, it must have been turned over to the government for safekeeping. If so, it might still be out there waiting for your father to claim it. What needs to be done is a search in every State or Province in which your father lived from the time he bought the stock until today. You can check the lost property records online for free online for most States and some Provinces at http://www.unclaimed.org/

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Wow! i followed whatever news i could find and i thought they might be around. here is my follow-up. when my grandpa died i did an unclaimed property serach and never found any cash from this mine. he only lived in florida from the 1930's. if we still have the certificate then i doubt he ever got cash. do you have any other suggestions on where or who we could contact about this?

Answer
Michael, you could try contacting AMI's Transfer Agent, Computershare (www.computershare.com) and see if they can provide any additional information. However, the acquisition by American Reserve was back in 1989, and I doubt they will have the records available from a prior merger, but it doesn't hurt to ask.

Regarding the lost property, I would try Florida again. Make sure you search under the exact name as is appears on the Paymaster stock certificate. Often the certificates misspell or abbreviate names, but the State will not know of the change, and thus will only list the lost property under the same spelling as on the certificate. That makes it much more difficult to find on the first search.

This year marks 20 years since the merger. Each State has their own rules about how long they keep lost property in safekeeping. Some states are as little as 8 years, while other keep the money forever. I don't know what Florida's rules are, but you should check on the website and see if they have that information.