Benson and Hedges

Beautifully engraved RARE SPECIMEN certificate from the Benson and Hedges. This historic document was printed by the American Banknote Company in the 1930's and has an ornate border around it with a vignette of the company logo between allegorical men. This item has the printed signatures of the Company’s President and Treasurer. This is the first time we have had this certificate for sale.




Certificate Vignette

The history of Benson & Hedges dates back to 1873 when Richard Benson & William Hedges set up a tobacco business, Benson & Hedges Ltd. at 13 Old Bond Street, London. In 1885, Richard Benson left the tobacco business and Alfred Paget Hedges succeeded his father. In the 1900's, branches of Benson & Hedges Ltd. also opened in America and Canada.

In the 1930's, Abraham Wix acquired the UK business and then established Benson & Hedges (Overseas) Ltd. to handle overseas trade. In 1955, Benson and Hedges Ltd. was acquired by Gallaher Limited and, hence, the trademark in the UK, while in 1956, British American Tobacco acquired Benson & Hedges (Overseas) Ltd.

As an aside, the American branch became independent in 1928 and was subsequently bought by Phillip Morris in 1958. Phillip Morris also purchased the Canadian branch in 1960 to secure the Benson & Hedges trademark in these regions.

Today, British American Tobacco owns the trademark for Benson & Hedges through Asia Pacific (excluding Taiwan and the Philippines), the Middle East, most of Africa and European Duty Free markets.

British American Tobacco is an international cigarette manufacturer with manufacturing and processing operations worldwide. The Company's international brands include Dunhill, Lucky Strike, Kent, State Express 555, Rothmans, Peter Stuyvesant, Benson & Hedges, Kool, Pall Mall, Viceroy, Winfield and John Player Gold Leaf. British American Tobacco's local brands include Jockey Club (Argentina), Stradbroke (Australia), du Maurier (Canada), North State (Finland), HB (Germany), Sopianae (Hungary), Wills (India), Ardath (Indonesia), Carrolls (Ireland), Boots (Mexico) Jan III Sobieski (Poland), Yava Gold (Russia), Courtleigh (South Africa), Parisienne (Switzerland), GPC (United States) and Xon (Uzbekistan). British American Tobacco also produces fine cut, pipe tobacco and cigars.

---

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 and realized nice appreciation in value over the past several years.