BIC Pen Corporation

Beautifully engraved RARE SPECIMEN certificate from the BIC Corporation. This historic document was printed by the Security-Columbian Banknote Company in 1984 and has an ornate border around it with a vignette of the company logo. This item has the printed signatures of the Company’s President and Secretary. This is the first time we have seen this certificate for sale.








Certificate Vignette

BIC manufactures and sells 21 million stationery products every day around the world. BIC is the world’s number one manufacturer of ballpoint pens and a leader in stationery products.

In France, in 1945, a man named Marcel BICH, who had been the production manager for a French ink manufacturer, bought with his partner Edouard BUFFARD, a factory outside Paris and set up business as the maker of parts for fountain pens and mechanical lead pencils.

While his writing instruments parts business began to grow, the development of the ballpoint was advancing in both Europe and the United States and Marcel BICH saw the enormous potential for this new writing instrument.

After obtaining the patents rights to a ball pen created by Hungarian inventor, Ladislao BIRO, Marcel BICH introduced his ownball pen in December 1950. Touting his product as a reliable pen at an affordable price, he called it « BIC », a shortened, easy-to-remember version of his own name. The famous BIC® CRISTAL® ballpoint pen was born! He supported its launch with memorable, effective advertising and its sales surpassed even his own expectations.

The company then expanded its product range and began to enter foreign markets by creating subsidiaries, acquiring control of foreign companies or through agents. Since 1950, BIC® ball pens have revolutionized the writing habits of millions of consumers all around the world, who continues to value them for their quality and affordable price.

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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.