Pennies for Uranium

In Western states last week, there was a feverish new boom in penny uranium stocks. People with a few spare dollars were taking flyers in such stocks as Uranium, Inc., Sun Uranium, Atlas Uranium. Penny Stock, and Uranium Corp. of America. The fever started in Salt Lake City, spread to Denver, and to the San Francisco Mining Exchange. There, said President George Flach, the uranium boom has brought "the brightest prospects I've seen around here in ten or 15 years."

The man who started all the excitement was smooth-talking Jay Walters Jr.. 60, who drifted into Salt Lake City about a year ago, just after Charlie Steen's big uranium strike (TIME, Aug. 3). Starting with some claims, he formed the Uranium Oil and Trading Co., capitalized at 3,000,000 one-cent shares. When brokerage firms shied away from selling them, Walters enlisted the help of a young customer's man named Jack Coombs, who set up shop at a coffee counter operated by Frank Whitney in the Continental Bank & Trust Co. Building. In a week, they sold $10,000 worth. With every $20 purchase, they threw in a cup of coffee. The stock quickly shot up as high as 8-c-, then slid down, but was still at 5 1/2-c- last week.

Land of Opportunities. Walters went on to form another company, Aladdin Uranium, sold $43,000 worth at a penny a share. It has since gone up to 5-c-. All the while, Walters has kept stockholders encouraged by cheery reports that do not always bear on the company's prospects. Sample: "It is great to be able to pay taxes, and God bless America, the land of opportunities ..."

Coffeeman Whitney closed up his shop, moved seven floors up in the same building to form Whitney Investment Co., and expects to gross $50,000 this year as a broker in penny stocks. Stockseller Coombs also started his own brokerage firm. Others got into the act, formed their own companies and began peddling stock. The boom will come of age when & if Prospector Steen and ex-Automan Joseph Frazer, who have formed Standard Uranium, get their stocks listed on the American Stock Exchange, as scheduled.

The Big Strike. Some of the most spectacular gains have been in the stocks of old mining companies that rushed into uranium prospecting. The Mayflower Co., originally organized to mine coal, started at 2 1/2-c-, shot up to 55-c- in three months, has since settled back to 10-c-. A few of the more solid issues are now traded by brokers, and over-the-counter trading is estimated at 200,000 shares a day. One broker, underwriting new issues, traded 11 million shares in a month.

So far, few of the new companies have struck uranium, or even worked their claims. Nevertheless, early investors have not lost money. The trick has been to get in on the ground floor of a new issue and then unload at double or triple the price to latecomers. The big lure is that there is uranium in the Colorado Plateau, and in some places, lots of it. All the penny plungers dream of the day when their company makes the big strike--and their penny stocks suddenly are worth dollars.

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