In 1927 the royalty trade around a West Texas wildcat worked like this: the landowner and the promoters who bought from him cut the royalty under unproved school land into small fractions and sold them by mail. The buyers carried the risk of the well. The sellers took the cash. Two excerpts from The Oil and Gas Journal of November 24, 1927. In the classifieds, Mid-West Lease & Royalty Corp. of Fort Worth offers "1/32nd of 1/8 of royalty on 160-acre offset to Deep Rock well now drilling, Block A-46, Andrews Co., Tex., warranty deed, recorded in your name, $40." The tract was a quarter-section next to the Deep Rock No. 1 W. J. Harris wildcat on Section 12, in the same sections where A. J. Posey held royalty and would start selling his own $20 units the next spring. On page 42 of the same issue, the Journal's wildcat table shows that well shut down at 1,260 feet with the hole full of fresh water. Andrews County's discovery well, Deep Rock's No. 1 Ogden, came in two years later, in December 1929, about a mile and a half away on Section 6. Texas's Blue Sky Law of 1923 reached stock and trust certificates, not a deed of land, so no permit was needed to sell this. Today a fractional royalty interest offered to the public is a security under the Securities Act of 1933 and the Texas Securities Act: the offering must be registered or exempt, and a public pitch like this ad is in practice limited to accredited investors. Selling it to the dentist down the street could get you into quite a bit of trouble.