Well, about 3 years ago I listened to Jim Sinclair and converted some of my stock holdings to certificate form. Now, I have a certificate for ECU shares that I will need to tender for the merger; the paperwork I received from Computershare recommends tendering shares in advance of the merger vote - the certificate would be returned to me in the event that the merger doesn't happen. The certficate is supposed to be sent to Toronto; I am in Oregon - i.e., shipment to Toronto would be international.

I thought I'd try an alternate approach: I tried to deposit the certificate with TD Ameritrade, with whom I have an account. They refused to deposit my certificate! Something about covering their own a**es due to risk; supposedly under some circumstances they could be fined by the US govt! - this is true even though I already hold a significant quantity of ECU shares with them. So, depositing the certificate with a brokerage appears to be tricky at best.

Shipping the certificate is also tricky. FedEx won't even ship the certificate for the $10K value I'd like to insure it for. UPS wants to charge a minimum of about $160-170 from Oregon to Toronto, with the $10K insurance. The US Postal Service will only insure to a maximum of $5000, using Express Mail, at a cost of about $42.

The Postal Service appears to be my best option, though of course I'd lose money if the envelope were lost.

I had *no idea* that this process would be this painful! Does anyone have other suggestions on how to tender these shares? Very frustrating....

Thanks alot in advance!

Goldgrrl