Beautiful engraved specimen certificate from the
Shawmut Corporation dated in 1982. This historic document was printed by American Bank Note Company and has an
ornate border around it with a vignette of a indian. This item has the printed signatures of the Company's President and Secretary and is over 25 years old.
Certificate Vignette
Shawmut Bank was established in Boston in 1836 and its logo, the stylized bust of Chief Obbatinewat, became widely recognizable in Greater Boston over the next century and a half.
In 1975 Shawmut Association, Inc. was renamed Shawmut Corporation, and its expansion of banking operations continued in the form of mergers with bank holding companies rather than the simpler acquisition of independent banks.
In 1988, Shawmut Corporation merged with Hartford National Corporation and was renamed Shawmut National Corporation.
Shawmut National Corporation was one of New England's largest banking companies, offering financial products and services in consumer banking, commercial markets, investment and trust services, and financial institutions.
The name and logo were retired in 1995 as a result of the merger of Shawmut National Corporation and Fleet Financial Group.
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.