Red Top, valued at another $5,000,000, had in excess of $2,000,000
worth of medium grade ore blocked out.
Wingfield and Nixon were also heavily interested in Columbia Mountain,
Sandstorm, Blue Bull, Crackerjack, Red Hills, Oro, Booth, Milltown,
Kendall, May Queen, and other Goldfield stocks. No sooner did the five
stocks forming the merger begin to show such startling market advances
than the ballooning tendency manifested itself in Wingfield and Nixon's
miscellaneous list, and all of them showed phenomenal gains. Soon the
entire list of Goldfield, Tonopah, Manhattan, Bullfrog, and other
Nevada mining securities listed on the San Francisco Stock Exchange and
traded in on the exchanges and curbs of the country, felt the force of
the terrific rises, and sympathetically they skyrocketed to unheard-of
levels.
To convey an idea as to how far the prices of these stocks were moved
up beyond their intrinsic worth, as a result of the ballooning process
of the merger, I give some comparisons.
Columbia Mountain sold during the boom at above $1.50; it is now
selling at 5 cents. Blue Bull, Crackerjack, Oro, Booth, Red Hills,
Milltown, Kendall, Conqueror, Hibernia, Ethel, Kewanas, Sandstorm and
May Queen sold at an average of 75 cents during the boom; they are now
selling at an average of less than 5 cents. A hundred other Goldfield
securities, which were in eager demand at the zenith of the spectacular
movement at prices ranging from 50 cents to $2.50 can now be purchased
at from 1 to 5 cents per share, while many others that were hopefully
bought by an over-wrought public at all sorts of figures are now not
quoted at all.
AT THE HEIGHT OF THE FRENZY
The difference between the market price of listed Nevada stocks on
November 15, 1906, and that of to-day is in excess of $200,000,000. A
fair estimate of the public's real-money loss in the listed division is
$150,000,000.
Nor was this all of the damage that was done. When excitement in
Goldfield's listed stocks reached a frenzy, wild-catters operating from
the cities got into harness, and within three months in the
neighborhood of 2,000 companies, owning in most instances properties
situated miles from the proved zone in Goldfield, or in unproved camps
near Goldfield, were foisted on the public for $150,000,000 more.
The fact that Mohawk, which in the early days of Goldfield could have
been purchased at 10 cents, had advanced to $20 and had shown
purchasers a profit of 20,000 per cent.; that Laguna had advanced in
less than two years from 15 cents to $2; that Jumbo and Red Top,
selling at $5, could have been purchased a year or two before at around
10 cents; that Goldfield Mining, which had in the early days been
peddled around the camp at 15 cents, had moved up to $2, etc., gave the
wild-catters an argument that was convincing to gulls in every town and
hamlet in the Union. And the harvest was immense. Not one of the 2,000
wild-cats has made good, and every dollar so invested has been lost.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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