Beautifully engraved SPECIMEN certificate from the Playboy Enterprises, Inc. printed in 1978. This historic document was printed by the American Banknote Company and has an ornate border around it with a vignette Miss February 1971, Willy Rey and the Playboy bunny logo. This item has the printed signatures of the Company's President, Hugh Hefner and their Executive Vice President and is over 46 years old. The blue certificate was for over 100 shares and the green certificate was for 100 shares.
Certificate Vignette
Actual Willy Rey Centerfold
(Certificate Added)
Playboy is the world's best-selling men's magazine. Almost nine million American adults read Playboy every month, and the magazine's U.S. circulation rate base of 3.15 million is larger than that of Esquire, GQ, Details and Rolling Stone combined. Additionally, an estimated five million adults read the 14 international editions of the magazine, bringing Playboy's global readership to almost 15 million. * Capitalizing on Playboy's global recognition and reputation, the Company more than 25 years ago began expanding its publishing franchise into international editions, books and Newsstand Specials. Locally produced editions of Playboy are published in 14 countries: Germany (1972), Italy (1972), Japan (1975), Brazil (1975), Spain (1978), Australia (1979), Netherlands (1983), Greece (1985), Czech Republic (1991), Poland (1992), Russia (1995), Taiwan (1995), Croatia (1997) and Slovakia (1997). * Since its creation in 1953, Playboy has published a rich editorial mix of fiction, articles and interviews. Among the literary talents who have contributed to the magazine are fiction authors Scott Turow, John Updike, Joyce Carol Oates, Tom Clancy, Kurt Vonnegut, Saul Bellow, Stanley Elkin, Margaret Atwood, Harold Robbins and Mickey Spillane, and journalists David Halberstam, Robert Scheer and Nat Hentoff. Each month, the Playboy Interview features provocative, in-depth conversations with newsworthy personalities such as Dennis Rodman, Tommy Hilfiger, David Mamet, Mike Tyson, Michael Jordan, John Travolta, Bob Kerstein, Bill Gates and Betty Friedan. Celebrity profiles and pictorials, service features, the politically voluble Playboy Forum and regular columns on relationships, fitness, personal finance, music, movies and style complete the comprehensive editorial package. * Beautiful women have always been an integral part of Playboy magazine. Besides the ubiquitously popular Playboy Playmate featured in every issue, the magazine also has showcased photography of some of the world's best-known actresses, models and celebrities, including Farrah Fawcett, Katarina Witt, Cindy Crawford, Sharon Stone, Kim Basinger, Stephanie Seymour and Bo Derek.
History from Wikipedia, Encyberpedia and OldCompany.com (old stock certificate research service)
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.
