Beautifully engraved RARE Specimen from the
American-Marietta Company printed in the 1940's. This historic document was printed by American Bank Note Company and has an
ornate border around it with a vignette of two boys on the sides of a map of the United States. This item has the printed signatures of the Company's President, Grover M. Hermann and Secretary, Paul Weber and is over 60 years old. This is the first time we have had this certificate for sale and we only have one.
Certificate Vignette
In 1961, the Glenn Martin Company consolidated with the American-Marietta Company (founded in 1913) and was renamed Martin Marietta Technologies, Inc. In April 1993, Martin Marietta expanded further when it combined with the Aerospace businesses of the General Electric Company. Affirming its commitment to remain a leading contractor in the nation's civil and military space launch programs, on December 22, 1993, Martin Marietta signed an agreement with General Dynamics to purchase its Space Systems Division. The primary asset of the Space Systems Division is business relating to the Atlas series of space launch vehicles and the Centaur upper stages used with Atlas and Titan IV launch vehicles.
On August 29, 1994 the Lockheed Corporation and the Martin Marietta Corporation announced that the two companies would merge into Lockheed Martin. The deal was finalized on March 15, 1995.
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.