Beautifully engraved RARE SPECIMEN certificate from the Harley - Davidson Motor Co. This historic document was printed by the American Banknote Company 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 ( W. H. Davidson ) and Secretary.
Certificate Vignette William H. Davidson became president of Harley - Davidson Motor Co. in 1942 and retired in 1973. He was also elected to The Motorcycle Hall of Fame 1999 which include those who have excelled in motorcycle business, history, design and engineering, in addition to those known for their contributions to road riding, off-road riding and all categories of motorcycle racing. 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.
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Certificate Vignette