Expert: Steven Taylor - 12/18/2010

Question
Hi Steven,
        My wife inherited some stock certificates when her Mom passed many years ago. We were thinking of selling to cover college fees but don't know how to go about it or if they are worth anything.
The stocks are Silver Standard Resources, Western Copper Holdings and PWA Corp.
Any advice would be welcome.

Answer
Carl, assuming those certificates are valid and how many your wife has, they might hold some substantial value.

The bad news first. The PWA has no value. It did a 1 for 20 reverse split and became Canadian Airlines, which went into reorganization in 2000. The operating assets were sold to Air Canada, but the cash went to debtors and shareholders received no value.

Silver Standard currently trades on the TSX for about $27.50 per share.

Western Copper did a merger with Glamis, where Western Shareholders received 0.688 of a Glamis share PLUS 1 share of the new Western Copper for every share of old Western Copper held. The new Western Copper trades for about $2.50 per share on the TSX.

Glamis was itself acquired later by Goldcorp on the basis of 1.69 Goldcorp shares PLUS 1 cent cash for each Glamis share held. Goldcorp trades on the TSX for about $45.60 per share.

I suggest you contact a broker ASAP as they can assist you with confirming the certfiicates are vaild and, if so, with the reorganization of the certificates so they can be sold.