Beautifully engraved Specimen Stock Certificate from the
Norfolk Southern Railway Company. This historic document was printed by the Columbian Banknote Company and has an
ornate border around it with a vignette of an allegorical woman with trains on both side. This item has the printed signatures of the Company's President and Secretary.
Certificate Vignette
Norfolk Southern, through its Norfolk Southern Railway Company subsidiary, operates approximately 21,300 route miles in 22 states, the District of Columbia and Ontario , Canada , serving every major container port in the eastern United States and providing connections to western rail carriers. Norfolk Southern operates an extensive intermodal network and is the nation’s largest rail carrier of automotive parts and finished vehicles.
About Specimen CertificatesSpecimen 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 were 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 has grown in popularity over the past several years.