Beautifully engraved specimen certificate from the Daggett Chocolate Company printed in 1919. This historic document was printed by the John Lowell Banknote Company and has an ornate border around it with a vignette of their logo.
Certificate Vignette Fred L. Daggett founded his own business at the age of 21. He started in a little Chelsea, MA store back in 1891. It grew to be Daggett's Chocolate Company in Cambridge, MA. He owned over 30 different name chocolates. He bought out other candy companies, such as Page and Shaw, Lowney's, Apollo, Gobelin, Handspun, and Old Homestead. By 1952, he had a seven story key building on Main Street in Cambridge, plus surrounding buildings. 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.