Expert: Steven Taylor - 7/10/2010

Question
In  a aunts box of papers I found a capital stock of 100 shares fron the Donalda mines ltd to a Doherty ,Roadhouse &co. dated 1946
and on the back it also has J R Timmins & co.  dated 1953   it also has some offical stamps about the toronto stock exchange  
could you give me some insight on this piece of paper

Answer
David, from the information I have available:

Donalda did a 1 for 9 reverse split and became Aldona Mines, then did a 1 for 10 reverse split and became TCF Energy. Since your Aunt had 100 shares originally, those reverses would have reduced her share count to 1 TCF share. TCF then merged into TriGas on the basis of 1 share of TriGas for every share of TCF OR $1 per share cash. TCF was later acquired in 2000 by Calpine for $3.20/share cash.

In the end, assuming your Aunt's certificate was vaild, it would have been worth $1 or $3.20 10+ years ago. I doubt it would be worth your time to go searching for that money (if it was even available - if she didn't get it, it would have been turned over to the government, many of which only hold unclaimed funds for 10 years or less) because even if you found it, it would likely cost substantially more than that to provide the notarized documentation required to claim it.