Beautifully engraved SPECIMEN certificate from the
Central Arizona Light and Power Company. This historic document was printed by the American Banknote Company in 1930 and has an
ornate border around it with a vignette of an allegorical woman sitting on a generator in front of a power plant while hold two wires together creating an arc with sparks. This is the first time we have had this certificate for sale. Toning in margins. EF condition.
Certificate Vignette
The Central Arizona Light and Power Co., later merged with Arizona Edison. Eventually, that company became Arizona Public Service Company (APS). APS, Arizona’s largest and longest-serving electricity utility, serves more than 902,000 customers in 11 of the state’s 15 counties. With headquarters in Phoenix, APS is the largest subsidiary of Pinnacle West Capital Corp. (NYSE: PNW)
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.