Elblight Company of America - New York 1902

Beautifully engraved RARE Specimen Gold Bond Certificate from Elblight Company of America dated 1902. This historic document was printed by Franklin-Lee Bank Note Company and has an ornate border around it with a vignette of an eagle. This item has the signatures of the Company's President and Secretary and is over 104 years old.








Certificate Vignette

About 1902 a lamp was manufactured by the Edison Lamp Company for the Elblight Company with a base that had a different appearance from other bases of the time. The lamp was made with a porcelain base and two solid rods were utilized for the electrical contacts. The ends of the rods were pointed and very sharp. The reason for this was that the lamp was designed to pierce flexible duplex cable for temporary lighting.

In November of 1906, the Elblight Company advertised unique lights and cables that allowed the lamps to be plugged into different locations on the cable. The ad shows the lights strung from the ceiling of the Siegel-Cooper Company in New York City.


Early Company Advertisement shown for Illustrative Purposes

The Elblight Company of America specialized in decorative lighting for window displays and outdoor lighting. The lights were also used for Christmas Decorations. The company realized that the function of light bulbs had expanded from strictly utilitarian uses to decorative ones, much as their function had expanded in the broader culture; strings of ornamental electric bulbs could be found at wedding banquets, ballrooms, formal dinners, and Outdoor advertising

It was the electric lights employed at New York's Metropolitan Theatre made by the Elblight Company of America at the reception of King Henry of Prussia which allegedly prompted the guest of honor to comment that he had never seen anything in any auditorium to surpass their wondrous beauty. Employing electric bulbs as decoration both continued existing traditions of employing festive lighting for occasions of significance, and expanded upon the more particular practice of strings of electric bulbs as seen at the World's Fairs and International Expositions.

History from Wikipedia.

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Gold Bonds

Many times Bonds were Payable in Gold or Gold Coin to give the impression that they were a more secure investment. In reality, they were not more secure since there wasn't any gold set aside as collateral for these bonds.

On April 5, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Presidential Executive Order 6102 which invoked his authority to make it unlawful to own or hold gold coins, gold bullion, or gold certificates. The export of Gold for purposes of payment was also outlawed, except under license from the Treasury.

On January 30, 1934, the Gold Reserve Act became law which made the ownership of gold illegal except for coins of numismatic value. As a result of this law, Bonds were no longer allowed to be Payable in Gold.

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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 over the past several years.