The Montgomery County credit card company this month asked for court permission to abandon contracts for expensive suites at Citizens Bank Park and Lincoln Financial Field.

The firm even asked if it could sell office equipment, cars - possibly including two limos, two early 1990s Mercedes-Benz sedans, and a 1997 Porsche 911 Carrera - and other items it no longer needs, now that chief executive officer Dennis Alter has given up hopes of finding a new business line for Advanta.

Unfortunately, those moves will likely do little to help the 3,400 individual investors who were owed $138 million when the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in November after closing its card operations to new business in May.

Last summer, Edward Lavage of Bethlehem invested $70,000 in Advanta investment notes with a 9 percent yield. "That was the best return out there, but there was no FDIC insurance on it. We knew that, but we didn't know that company was in such bad shape," said Lavage, 67.

The company stopped selling the notes in July, not long after Lavage sent in his money.

Advanta also owes $96 million to what are likely to be institutional investors. But that debt has a lower payment priority than the $138 million in investment notes, whose above-market-rate interest payments made them popular with older investors seeking income.

The Spring House company's biggest asset was a Utah bank that issued Advanta credit cards. Slammed by huge losses on loans to small businesses and ordered by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. in July to unwind its operations, the bank hemorrhaged value last year and is likely to be taken over by regulators, leaving nothing for Advanta's creditors.

"The bank was its main asset. With that going away, the outlook is bleak for full recovery," said Anthony H. Catanach Jr., an associate professor of accounting at Villanova University and the Maguire fellow at American College in Bryn Mawr.

In a recent bankruptcy filing, Advanta said it had $98 million in cash. If all that money were applied to the $234 million owed to two classes of creditors, recovery would be 42 cents for every dollar of debt. But no bankruptcy is that straightforward.

Asked by The Inquirer to examine Advanta's financial filings, Catanach said that there could be a little more money to distribute from the sale of a modern art collection with an estimated value of $4.3 million and other assets, such as receivables from subsidiaries, of uncertain value.

Catanach, whose experience analyzing troubled financial institutions goes back to the 1980s savings-and-loan crisis, cautioned that an unknown amount of money will be eaten up getting the firm through bankruptcy.

Two bankruptcy law firms asked for payments of nearly $180,000 in the last two weeks for work since the Nov. 8 filing.

Lavage said he and his wife were not distraught at their loss, even though he is convinced that Alter, who built a 38,000-square-foot house in Whitemarsh Township and donated $15 million for a building at Temple University, "did things that are misleading."

Citing a Psalm verse, Lavage said Thursday: "If someone steals your money, the Lord will restore it seven times. I'm standing on that."

Meanwhile in Burlington, 90-year-old Irving Horwitz said he had gotten an offer for his $29,000 in Advanta notes that would pay him 10 to 15 cents on the dollar.

Horwitz, who said he had been a satisfied Advanta investor for 40 years at least, back to the days of founder Jack Alter, had a different assessment of Dennis:

"I know that Alters are very honest people. He'll do his best to pay everybody back."