Black and Decker Manufacturing Company 1930

Beautifully engraved SPECIMEN certificate from the Black and Decker Manufacturing Company. This historic document was printed by the American Banknote Company around 1930 and has an ornate border around it with a vignette of the company's early logo flanked by two allegorical men. This item has the printed signatures of the Company’s President ( S. Duncan Black ) and Secretary ( Chas. Sacra ).








Certificate Vignette

Black & Decker debuted in the early 1900s when two young entrepreneurs, S. Duncan Black and Alonzo G. Decker, founded a small machine shop in Baltimore, Maryland, and called it the Black & Decker Manufacturing Company. They started with an initial investment of $1,200, and originally made specialized machinery for candy dipping, cotton picking, milk-bottle capping, and postage-stamp splitting. Since then, the company has grown into a global marketer and manufacturer of quality products used in and around the home and for commercial applications.

In 1984, Black & Decker expanded its product lines into the kitchen and inside the home with irons, toaster ovens, mixers, blenders, coffeemakers, and more. Today, The company's household products focus on resourcefulness in small appliance design and manufacture with product lines that range from Brew 'N Go personal-size coffeemakers and Gizmo cordless (and mountable) can openers to Ergo appliances.

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About Specimens

Specimen 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.