questions for all the stock market gurus

[footfootfoot]

When my dad passed away recently he left behind a pile of stock certificates, maybe thirty or forty. He also had an account set up with a broker and my sister is joint owner w/ rights of survivorship.

My question is about the certificates which do not appear on the account and seem to be a separate thing.

Some of the dates of the certificates go back to 1959, some as recent as 2000. Some have cusip numbers which when searched show info about the stock's current price, others have cusip numbers which yield a symbol, but no other info about the stock, some have no cusip or symbol and googling turns up nothing. Some are incorporated in various states; Idaho, Montana, Utah. Or countries; Australia, Canada, Bermuda.

So my questions are:

Does the possesion of a stock certificate imply actual ownership of the shares, or is it possible that these shares were sold at some point and he just kept the actual certificate for some reason?

If searching for symbols or cusips, or other info about a company turns up no results is it likely that the company went bust and the paper is trash?

Does the state or country of incorporation have any bearing on the likelihood of the stock being junk?

If some of the stock is valuable what is the procedure for cashing it in?

Is there a better way of researching older stocks than googling?

Are these just wall hangings?

My dad seemed to have a penchant for mining stocks in far flung parts of the world. some of what I came up with showed the stocks as having a value of 0.0012, although a couple were 1.80 - 2.00 a share.

My sister is doing the bulk of the work at settling his affaris, but dumped this on me as she is somewhat whelmed by all the other stuff. I know almost nothing about stocks, so any help would be appreciated.

thanks.