By The Eldorado Mineral Partners team · Last reviewed June 2026
Why your mailbox is full
Mineral buyers mine public data: county deed records, state well files, probate filings. A new well near your acres — or a death in the family — triggers the letters. Volume mailers send thousands of offers priced low enough that whoever signs first is profitable; your acceptance, not your acres, is the product.
None of this means every mailed offer is dishonest. It means the burden of proof is on the buyer — and the good ones can carry it.
The sight draft: a check that isn’t
The oldest trick in the business is a document that looks like a check, stapled to a deed. A sight draft is payable only after the buyer “verifies title” — meaning you can sign and record a deed, deposit the draft, and wait weeks while the buyer decides whether to fund it at all. You’ve transferred ownership; they’ve kept an option.
Legitimate closings run the other direction: signed documents and funds exchange together, through a title company or escrow, with money wired — not mailed.
House rule worth adopting: anything that looks like a check but says “draft,” “payable upon approval,” or “upon verification of title” goes in a drawer, unsigned, until an attorney has seen it.
The countdown clock
“This offer expires in 10 days.” Minerals don’t spoil, and real valuations don’t evaporate on a schedule — facts change prices; calendars don’t. Manufactured urgency exists for one reason: to keep you from getting a second opinion. Treat any expiring offer as an invitation to do exactly what the deadline discourages.
The closing-table haircut
A common pattern: a generous headline number wins your signature, then “title issues” surface during diligence and the price drops 20% at the finish line — when you’re fatigued and invested. Real title problems do exist, but a price cut without a documented, explained cause is a tactic, not a discovery.
Ask up front, in writing: under what circumstances can the price change, and will you show me the records if it does?
No math, no offer
The deepest red flag is silence about how the number was built. An offer that won’t state your net acres, decimal, the wells it counted, and its price assumptions is a guess wearing a suit. You can take our offer to anyone precisely because the math rides along with it — demand the same of everyone.
How to test any offer — including ours
A five-minute protocol that filters out most bad actors:
- Ask for the math: acres, decimal, wells counted, price deck, and the producing-versus-upside split.
- Ask how funds move at closing — the only good answer involves a title company or escrow and a wire.
- Ask what makes the price change before closing, and how it would be documented.
- Get a second number: another buyer, a landman, or our free estimator for a sanity range.
- Show it to your attorney or CPA — a few hundred dollars of review on a five- or six-figure decision.
Educational content, not legal, tax, or investment advice — your facts are specific, so involve your attorney and CPA before deciding anything. We’ll gladly work with them.