Beautiful engraved RARE specimen certificate from the CDnow, Inc printed in 1999. This historic document was printed by the American Banknote Company and has an ornate border around it with a vignette the company's logo. This item has the printed signatures of the Company's President ( Jason Olim ). This is the first time we have had this specimen certificate for sale. 
Certificate Vignette CDNOW was created in the August of 1994 by Jason and Matthew Olim. It was started in the basement of their parents home. Jason Olim became the president and CEO of CDNOW and his twin brother Matthew became the Principal Software Engineer. The company was incorporated in Pennsylvania in 1994 The company started by selling only CDs and has expanded considerably. The company eventually merged with Bertelsmann, the third largest media company in the world at the time.
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 over the past several years.
Certificate Vignette
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 over the past several years.
