Sun Microsystems - Delaware 1989

Beautiful engraved specimen certificate from the Sun Microsystems dated in 1989. This historic document was printed by Security-Columbian Bank Note 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 and Secretary and is over 20 years old.


Certificate Vignette

Sun Microsystems -- a company Scott McNealy co-founded in 1982 -- is the quintessential Silicon Valley success story. In just 18 years, the company has become a leading global supplier of network computing solutions, with revenues of more than $14 billion. Since taking the reins as CEO in 1984, McNealy has steered Sun to constant growth and profitability. His vision and business acumen have made him one of the most influential and widely quoted leaders in the complex, fluid, and fast-moving IT industry.

Sun is the leading maker of UNIX-based servers used to power corporate computer networks and Web sites. It also makes workstation computers and a large range of disk and tape based storage systems. Unlike most hardware vendors, Sun makes computers that use its own chips (SPARC) and operating system (Solaris). Its software portfolio includes application server, office productivity, and network management applications. Sun also developed Java, a programming language for creating software that can run unchanged on any kind of computer.

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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 over the past several years.