My father passed away last week and I was going through an old safe box I had in my closet for some documents relating to his estate. I happened to find a piece of mail that was addressed to me dated Jan 26,1996 that was unopened. The letter is a "Brokerage Account Statement" from a company called PC Financial Network. For some reason, when I was ~29yrs old I bought 6 shares of GRAND CASINO INC @ $29.875/share. The document also states that on 01/04/96 a Stock Split of 2 shares was received. I've tried many google searches to try and find a way to contact this company with no good results. The letter is pre-internet so there is no website address or email on it. Not sure if PC Financial Network even exists today. My account balance as of January 1996 per the letter is $288.09. Any advice on how to track down this account and get more info? Would be interesting to find out if I still in fact own these shares and if there is a way to find out their current day value.

Google says PC Financial Network was a penny stock broker under the Equitable Companies' Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette (https://www.nytimes.com/1996/04/11/business/media-business-advertising-line-stock-trading-heats-up-can-bigger-better.html). Googling that pulls up Wikipedia which says that firm was bought by Credit Suisse which is still around today. The Wikipedia article also talks about the PC Financial Network division changing hands several times most recently in 2006 to E*Trade.

ooo... I'd like to follow this just to learn!

You might try an unclaimed property search. Here's the website for Texas. Most states have a search engine like this one if you lived in another state or think the related property might be listed in another state.

https://www.claimittexas.gov/

Research the term escheatment for more details.

My google says hilton bought them, then spun them off as park place entertainment, which is now caesars... so those may now be shares of caesars

Got a CUSIP #? Without that you're most likely going to just spin your heels.

In my working days I'd get a random handful of stock certificates from relatives of deceased folks, if they were valid I could find things researching the CUSIP, if not I'd send them off to the back office. I never had a single certificate come back as worth a single penny. As an aside if anyone out there has paper certificates sitting in a safe box or dresser drawer awaiting someone to die every company out there charges to change the name to the new owner. I've seen it as high as $50 per certificate, that adds up if one has a handful. If they are electronically deposited in a brokerage account and the account owner dies there is typically no charge to change ownership. So tell dad to fork over the certificates and open a brokerage account somewhere