Beautifully engraved SPECIMEN certificate from the Armour & Company. This historic document was printed by the American Bank Note Company and has an ornate border around it with a vignette of an allegorical woman placing items onto a conveyer belt. This item has the printed signatures of the Company's Chairman of the Board of Directors and Secretary. 
Certificate Vignette Armour and Company was a big meatpacking company of Chicago. In 1891, the company was the largest meat packer in the country and controled 30 percent of Chicago's grain supply; under the brand name Veribest, Armour manufactured vegetable, soup, sauce and meat products. Armour and Company was acquired by the Dial Company in 1973. The Dial Corporation is one of America's leading manufacturers of consumer products, including Dial soaps, Purex laundry detergents, Renuzit air fresheners and Armour Star canned meats. Dial products have been in the American marketplace for more than 100 years. Company History 1868-1900 1868 -- An eyewitness to the California Gold Rush and its aftermath, Philip Danforth Armour returns to the Midwest and strikes it rich - processing food for the prospectors. Today we offer consumers Armour® Star canned meats. 1880 -- A vast deposit of borax, nature's magic water softener and cleanser, is discovered in Death Valley, Calif. Soon teams of 20 mules are pulling 12-ton wagons across 165 miles of hot desert to the railroad. Today we market it as 20-Mule Team® Borax. 1888 -- Armour enters the soap business, producing a laundry bar called Armour Family Soap. 1913-1930 1913 -- To keep customers happy, peddlers of America's first aluminum cookware perfect a scouring pad that combines steel wool, jeweler's rouge and soap. They call their brilliant idea Brillo. 1922 -- The first jug of Purex Bleach, to be followed by a superior phosphate-free laundry detergent, is formulated in the garage of a house in Los Angeles. Today, Purex® is the reigning value detergent and Number 2 brand. 1930 -- Backed by decades of research at his clinic in Springfield, Mass., John H. Breck, Sr., introduces a premium shampoo pH-balanced for normal, oily and dry hair. In 1936 Roma Whitney, 14, makes her poster debut as America's first Breck Girl. Today Breck products are sold primarily in Mexico. 1948-1964 1948 -- Meatpacker Armour prunes a list of 700 names and selects "Dial" to identify the world's first antibacterial deodorant bath soap. During an August heat wave, Dial is advertised in the Chicago Tribune on perfumed, four-color pages promising users 24-hour protection from body odor. 1953 -- The slogan "Aren't you glad you use Dial? Don't you wish everybody did?" establishes Dial as the nation's leading antibacterial soap. 1963 -- A favorite old-time convenience snack, the Vienna sausage, is packaged in a flavor-protecting, pop-top aluminum can. Fishermen form a Vienna sausage cult of tackle box folklore.Today Armour® Vienna's lead the market. 1964 -- Dial opens the largest, most modern soap making plant in the world on an 11-acre site 38 miles west of Chicago in Montgomery,IL. 1973-1988 1973 -- Dial dedicates the world's largest, most modern meat canning plant at Fort Madison, Iowa, which produces the leading brand of canned meats - Armour Star. 1973 -- Tone®, the only bath bar containing cocoa butter, is introduced. 1976 -- The Research & Development Lab, a world-class food and consumer products laboratory, opens in Scottsdale, Ariz., and quickly earns a reputation for innovative research and development. Today, with the addition of Accounting and Information Technology, it's known as DTAC (Dial Technical and Administrative Center). 1985 -- The Purex® household and laundry product lines are purchased. Acquired in the deal are such familiar brands as Purex and Trend detergents, Brillo soap pads and StaPuf fabric softeners. 1988 -- Exclusive rights are bought to make and sell such home pantry staples as 20-Mule-Team Borax all-purpose cleaner, Borateem stain remover and Boraxo powdered hand soap. In the White House sits President Ronald Reagan, fondly remembered as the host of "Death Valley Days" once sponsored on TV by Borax. 1988 -- Armour® introduces Lunch Buckets, the first line of microwave cup meals. 1989-1995 1989 -- Liquid Dial antibacterial hand soap pioneers a new category in personal hygiene products. Within 10 weeks of its introduction, germ-fighting Liquid Dial® rings up $1 million in sales. 1990 -- The sales volume of Breck shampoo and other hair care products purchased from American Cyanamid boosts Dial's annual revenue from all consumer products to more than $1 billion. 1993 -- The widely known line of Renuzit air fresheners is purchased by Dial from S.C. Johnson, then revitalized and expanded to swiftly move from Number 3 to Number 2 in its category. 1995 -- Nature's Accents, a line of premium skin care and soap products, is created for the Company's largest customer,Wal-Mart. 1995 -- Dial acquires ISC (International Soaps and Cosmetics) in Guatemala, a manufacturer of translucent bar soaps. Today ISC makes bar soaps for Dial and specialty bath shops. 1995 -- Purex® introduces Baby Soft, a value-priced detergent to launder baby clothes. 1996-1997 1996 -- Early in the year the decision is reached to divide The Dial Corp into two independent companies. By mid-August the process is complete and the consumer products business becomes The Dial Corporation, listed on the NYSE as DL. Dial unveils a new identity and strategic plan to guide its growth into the 21 century. 1996 -- Renuzit® introduces LongLast AromaSense Candles, entering the growing candle segment. 1997 -- Products that don't fit Dial's Strategic Plan are sold or discontinued. Brillo soap pads, and the London, Ohio, plant that makes them, are sold to Church & Dwight. Also part of the sale are Parsons' ammonia, BoPeep ammonia, Sno Bol toilet bowl cleaner, Cameo metal cleaner and Rain Drops water softener. Trademarks sold to others include Bruce floor care products and Magic Sizing and Starch. 1997 -- The Scottsdale Campus is created when Dial moves its Headquarters from Phoenix to 15501 North Dial Boulevard in Scottsdale, across the street from DTAC. 1997 -- International business grows with the acquisition of Nuevo Federal, a leading manufacturer and marketer of consumer products in Argentina. Separately, we acquire five leading soap brands from Procter & Gamble's Argentina subsidiary (three personal care soap brands and two laundry bar brands). 1998-2000 1998 -- Happy Anniversary, Dial Soap! The Company celebrates the 50th anniversary of Dial soap, its namesake brand. 1998 -- Dial introduces Hand Sanitizer, a waterless, antibacterial gel for people on the go. 1998 -- SpringWater Dial hits store shelves. 1998 -- A fifth franchise in Specialty Personal Care is created with the strategic acquisitions of Freeman® Cosmetic Corporation, a leading maker and marketer of natural skin, hair, bath and body, and foot care products, and Sarah Michaels®, Inc., a leading marketer of specialty personal care gift sets. Dial's own Nature's Accents becomes part of this new franchise. 1998 -- One million cases of Dial bar soap are sold to Wal-Mart this year - a record "first" for the Company. 1999 -- Dial launches Crystal Breeze, a line extension that's off to a fast start. 1999 -- Dial establishes a joint venture with Henkel KGaA of Düsseldorf, Germany, to develop and market a range of enhanced laundry products in North America under the Purex brand name. 2000 -- Dial acquires Zout stainer remover. Zout proves popular with consumers and immediately becomes an important part of the stain remover segment. Dial acquires Coast soap to join Dial and Tone in the Dial personal cleansing family. Coast production is moved to a Dial facility in 2001 and a restaged product line is to be unveiled in late 2001. Additional improvements to the Dial personal cleansing line of products include new Mountain Fresh bar soap, new Moisture Rich Lather for Dial bar soap, and the introduction of Tone Island Mist and Tone Clear body washes. Dial acquires Plusbelle, Argentina's volume leader in the hair care business. Plusbelle remains strong in 2000 and 2001 despite Argentina's faltering economy. Nature's Accent brand of beauty care products is discontinued. Company history from Dial Corporation's Press Information Material.
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 were 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 has 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 were 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 has grown in popularity over the past several years.
