My name is not Vitaly Shved

A couple of decades ago I was happily married and the brain stealing zombies had yet to appear. Somewhere around this time I fell madly in love with a local Seattle coffee roaster and decided to invest in the company. This would have been a time, long ago, where I had money to invest. Now I invest in a bottle of water and a decent pair of shoes, and it turns out I get more from my new investment than I ever did from my coffee shares.

Vitaly Shved, you are a tease and a bad tease at that. Who is this Vitaly Shved everyone is talking about? Just so you know, when I say everyone, I am speaking about the chorus inside my head, doubtful Mrs. Shved really cares where sweet young Vitaly is doing.

While cleaning out my bedroom this past weekend, and when I say cleaning, I mean cleansing it of all evil juju. This meant many trips to the local Goodwill and when I was all done, there was a large mess of papers on my bed. Papers that, as I was tossing things out, I thought to set aside to read and try to comprehend.

It is kind of amazing that at different points in our lives, we come across our history in the form of old bank accounts, letters from lawyers (my lord have I had a lot of letters from lawyers in my life) and stock certificates from companies that are almost as worthless as the bank documents and wedding announcements.

One of the gobs of papers was the stock certificates from this crap coffee company. I had long ago just threw these in with all the other papers my tax paying friend had told me I might need at some point.

Here is what I know from my tax paying friend, all documents are important, some more than others, but we must always prepare to prove to various governmental authorities that we saved, spent and earned what we said we did. I once asked how long do I have to keep these documents and my tax paying friend kind of coughed a little and said, "deadlines, the IRS ain't follow no stupid deadlines."

Weird, right?

So, I saw these stock certificates and I googled the company that issued them, which the search showed had been swallowed up by a large coffee company in Maine, or some other foreign country. All find my me, because of a large company bought my little coffee company, chances are I was now the proud holder of stock for a very large coffee company that could easily afford to by my shares. I went to the very large coffee companies website, clicked on Investor Relations because I am an investor you know, and quickly I saw numbers that made me want a new car. I was sure I was close to flush, not rich, but certainly enough cash for cheap Mexican food and an inflatable love doll.

I clicked the link to email the Investor Relations contact and sent off a little sweet email, begging, I mean, asking for information on the value of my once formidable stock.

Yesterday the Investor Relations woman sent me the nicest email. She was kind enough to explain that when her huge and successful coffee company purchased my puny and worthless company, they did not purchase the actual stores, and you know what the stores got to keep? The worthless stock. That's right, what was once just worthless had become completely useless. The paper the stock certificates is too thick to use as toilet paper, so don't waste comment space telling me what I can do with my certificates.

The very nice Investor Relations woman did tell me to check with the broke ass coffee retailers website and maybe email the imbecile they have handling Investor Relations. Hello Vitaly, this is where you come in.

See Vitaly Shved is the Investor Relations guru who emailed be back. Want to know the good news Vitaly had to share with me? He was nice enough to not get into investor relations double speak and keep things in a form I could understand. Vitaly, take it away: "The stock is not publicly traded and we do not assign a value to it.
Since the stock is not public, there is no market to sell the shares
currently."

Thank you so much Mr. Shved. So, what you are saying is that the value of the stock is zero? Vitaly, I'm talking to you. "No, they are not zero, but to give you a value we would need to do a valuation of the company to get a price, or go public (we almost did
back in 2007)."

So, while my mind was filled with images of cheap Mexican food and the latest Antonio Banderas inflatable love doll, I am left with what I had before, stock certificates of unknown value. Lucky for me I have a tax paying friend who advices me on such things. I'll be right back, will just make a quick call to see what to do now.