Baltimore Baseball Club, Inc. - Missouri

Beautiful specimen certificate from the Baltimore Baseball Club, Inc. This historic document was printed by the Franklin Lee Division - American Bank Note Company and has an ornate border around it with a vignette of the Baltimore Orioles Bird Logo. This certificate was printed before the state of incorporation was changed to Maryland.


Certificate Vignette



The Baltimore Orioles are a professional baseball team based in Baltimore, Maryland in the United States. They are a member of the Eastern Division of Major League Baseball's American League. One of the American League's eight charter franchises in 1901, it spent its first year as a major league club in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, as the Milwaukee Brewers before moving to St. Louis to become the St. Louis Browns. After 52 mostly hapless years in St. Louis, the Browns moved to Baltimore in 1954 and adopted the Orioles name in honor of the official state bird of Maryland. The Orioles name had been used by previous major league baseball clubs in Baltimore, including the American League Baltimore Orioles franchise from 1901–1902 that became the New York Yankees and the National League Baltimore Orioles which won National League championships under Hall-of-Fame manager John McGraw, before McGraw took the black and orange team colors to the New York Giants baseball team, which became the San Francisco Giants after the 1957 season. Nicknames for the team include the O's and the Birds. The Orioles have been best known for their successful stadium, the trend-setting Oriole Park at Camden Yards, opened in 1992 near the birthplace of Babe Ruth.

History from Wikipedia, the Old Stock Detective and OldCompany.com (old stock certificate research service)

---

About Specimen Certificates

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 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.