First a little history. Gold was discovered in North Carolina in 1799. Up until the South left the Union especially, there were hundreds of small mining ventures. Eventually Wall Street got into it and most of the mines in NC got a rep (caused by events in New York I might add) for stock manipulation, fraud, etc. A lot of mines with gold deposits of say 300000 dollars worth of gold (at @20/oz) were capitalized for 10000000 or more. No matter how good the mines were, there was no way they could provide a good return.

There is a story of a mine that was a good producer just a few miles from me. A New York investment house bought it, and sold stock in it. New management was brought in and a once profitable mine lost 200000 dollars in a matter of a year. In 1850 this was a huge amount of money. When the yankees were broke and thoroughly disgusted, they sold the mine property to the former owner, who promptly reworked the tailings for over 250000 dollars worth of gold in a few months. This is not heresay, this comes straight out of the first North Carolina Geological Survey, published in 1856.

Anyway, enough history. Would anyone out there know of where I can find some old stock certificates from these mines? I imagine most were destroyed but some are at least moderately valuable. thanks.

• Re: Old Stock Certificates Steve in KB 02:20:49 7/04/99 (0)