I, too, haven't posted in quite some time. Not much to contribute since I now hold the equivalent of about 5% of the ECU I once had. I've kept a bit of the new shares for old times sake having first bought into ECU big-time back in late 1998.

I'd feel rather bad if AUMN really took off and I'd kept nothing after all these years. However, if I had known that Michel Roy was severing connections with the new company, as I understand he has, I would have sold it all. I really admired that guy, since I always thought he was the real brawn and brains behind the development of ECU. Just my opinion. I believe he held over a million shares of ECU, which I assume he converted to AUMN shares. If he didn't, then that, imo, would really have reflected badly on the merger.

Without relevant company information or any access to company executives or inside information, one is left to wonder if the new company didn't want Michel, if they made him an offer he could refuse, perhaps he was ticked off at ECU being gobbled up or maybe he saw enough of a problem with the merger or company future that he decided it wasn't worth it. And after all those years. I'll never know and frankly don't care at this point.

My silly goal years ago was to hold as many shares as Michel had, but I hadn't quite reached a half of his pile when ECU's stock price began to really turn down, and I just stared at the screen in disbelief day after day and jettisoning small bundles here and there. It was all I could do to not buy the dips as ECU sagged, since, being burned badly in the past, I quit buying dips and in spite of all the encouraging words of so many guys saying that buying the dips was the thing to do. Heard a lot about buying, still do, and not much about selling.

The last lot of shares I let go was when the merger was announced, and it was one of the hardest things I can remember doing in a long time. Doesn't pay to get too attached to any company I'm told, but easier said than done. But the merger just didn't sit well with me then and less so now knowing that Michel, if true, has severed ties to AUMN.

The guys buying the dips on the way down may have to wait awhile to get back a lot that has been lost. Over the years I've been clobbered at least twice buying the dips. Once, I bought the dips only to have the company go under. That hurt. Another time I bought the dips and then watched the stock sputter for years and never recover.

And then there was Golden Star Mining. When reports of its huge potential began surfacing on Bill Murphy's site around the early 2000s, a lot of us including funds, I suppose, piled into the stock starting around 25 cents and drove it to over 8 bucks.

It was great and the talk was all about it going to the moon from there (sound familiar), but it started to sag and sag it did. I finally bit the bullet and sold it all around 3 bucks and glad I did. Fortunately, I was too gun shy by then to buy the dips and that saved me some big bucks. To this day, after all these years, Golden Star has traded roughly between 2 and 3 bucks tanking to under 1.10 the other day. The guys buying the dips never got much back and probably never will.

Problem for guys like me is that I have to rely on reports and hearsay and phone calls and opinions, my own research and just plain bullsh*t before deciding to invest or not. Guys better connected have a real advantage, at least most of the time. But that's the way it's always been and it is what it is.

So I can't help but wonder how many of my new and old juniors are going to be where they are now several years down the road. It's why I try to buy breakouts and especially the cup and handle thing. Problem with that is I may have to wait a long, long time to find any of those chart patterns again with the PMs. But I'll wait. It could happen.