Mr. Horsager of Prudential offers an "educated guess" that the insurers' inventories, valued at $1.5 billion, total at least 1.5 million acres.

The depot soon counted nearly 8,000 civilian employees and an inventory valued at three times all the property of Utah.

The latest quarter and 9-month include a gain of $1.3 million, or 11 cents a share, for the adoption, effective Sept. 1, of the FIFO method of inventory valuation for certain inventories previously valued by the LIFO method.

At the time of the Great Raid, many trade goods were en route from overseas to New Orleans, Louisiana to San Antonio, Texas and Austin, Texas; a total inventory valued at over $300,000 was reported to be at Linnville at that moment, including an undisclosed amount of silver bullion.

Gordon Brothers of Boston, the nation's largest retail liquidating firm, had agreed to run Workbench's going-out-of-business sale in return for a percentage of the proceeds, based on an estimate of retail inventory valued at $11 million to $13 million, Mr. Holt said.

Affected by the late-2000s financial crisis, Henry Dunay Designs and its inventory valued at $50 million was sold at auction in December 2009.

Meanwhile, its inventory of foreclosed real estate, valued at about $195 million in June, is rising as more developers walk away.

However, the losses in the latest and year-ago quarters were reduced as a result of the planned reduction of inventories valued on a LIFO basis.

For example, inventory valued on the books at $100 per item is written down to $50 per item resulting in a net loss of $50 per item in the current year.