Beautiful $1000 RARE Specimen Gold Bond certificate from the Commercial Cable Company printed in 1897. This historic document and has an ornate border around it with a vignette of a world globe connecting Europe to the United States with wires. This item and is over 119 years old. This bond had a 400 year term, and was issued in 1897 and due in 2397. This is the only example of this bond we have seen. Some wear on the edges.
Certificate Vignette The Commercial Cable Company was founded in the United States in 1884 by John William Mackay and James Gordon Bennett, Jr.. Their motivation was to break the then virtual monopoly of Jay Gould on transatlantic telegraphy and bring down prices (particularly for Bennett's newspaper empire). The technology was well established by this time and they were able to lay cables from Waterville in Ireland to Canso, Nova Scotia without the major technical problems of the first Transatlantic telegraph cable. Onward connections to New York etc were initially overland and later submarine. Connections from Waterville to Weston-super-Mare in England and Le Havre in France were soon established by the submarine route after initial use of landlines from Waterville onward to mainland Britain. The company flourished and remained as a trading name even though subsumed by ITT until the 1970s at least. The undersea cables remained in use carrying telegraph traffic until 1962. In 1998, cables were briefly visible going out to sea at Waterville and are probably still there. History from Wikipedia and OldCompany.com (old stock certificate research service) About Specimen Certificates 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.