Beautifully engraved RARE SPECIMEN certificate from the
Consolidated Film Industries, Inc. This historic document was printed by the American Banknote Company in the 1930's and has an
ornate border around it with a vignette of an allegorical woman between two globes. This item has the printed signatures of the Company’s President and Assistant Secretary. This is the first time we have seen this certificate.
Certificate Vignette
For more than 75 years CFI (Consolidated Film Industries) - a Technicolor company -- has offered integrated laboratory services to motion picture image makers and has received 13 Academy Awards for technical achievement. CFI caters to studios and the independent film community offering 16mm, 35mm, and 65mm film developing, 35mm & 70mm printing and restoration; digital film recording, telecine, and digital imaging, as well as commercials. CFI is the world's leader in large format 65/70mm film processing.
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.