Beautiful engraved Gold Bond Specimen Certificate from the
New York Dock Company dated in 1901. This historic document was printed by Franklin Lee Bank Note and has an
ornate border around it with a vignette of the a buidling and ship on a dock. This item is over 106 years old.
Certificate Vignette
In 1921, the New York Dock Company
had 159 bonded warehouses
with a storage capacity of some 65,000,000
cubic feet; and 34 piers, the longest measuring
1,193 feet and containing more than
175,000 square feet. These piers had a
total deck space of sixty-one and a half
acres.
History from OldCompanyResearch.com.
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 over the past several years.