Beautifully engraved SPECIMEN certificate from the
Alleghany Corporation. This historic document was printed by the American Banknote Company and has an
ornate border around it with a vignette of an allegorical man. This item has the printed signatures of the Company’s President and Secretary.
Certificate Vignette
Alleghany Corporation is engaged in the industrial minerals business through its subsidiaries, World Minerals Inc. (World Minerals), Celite Corporation (Celite) and Harborlite Corporation (Harborlite). Alleghany conducts a steel fastener importing and distribution business through its subsidiary, Heads & Threads International LLC (Heads & Threads). The Company is also engaged in property, casualty, fidelity and surety insurance businesses through its subsidiary, Capitol Transamerica Corporation (Capitol Transamerica). In addition, through another subsidiary, Alleghany Properties, Inc. (Alleghany Properties), the Company owns and manages properties in California.
About SpecimensSpecimen Certificates are actual certificates that have never been issued. They were usually kept by the printers in their permanent archives as their only example of a particular certificate. Sometimes you will see a hand stamp on the certificate that says "Do not remove from file".
Specimens were also used to show prospective clients different types of certificate designs that were available. Specimen certificates are usually much scarcer than issued certificates. In fact, many times they are the only way to get a certificate for a particular company because the issued certificates were redeemed and destroyed. In a few instances, Specimen certificates we made for a company but were never used because a different design was chosen by the company.
These certificates are normally stamped "Specimen" or they have small holes spelling the word specimen. Most of the time they don't have a serial number, or they have a serial number of 00000. This is an exciting sector of the hobby that grown in popularity and realized nice appreciation in value over the past several years.