Beautiful engraved specimen certificate from the Dawson Geophysical Company dated in 1981. This historic document was printed by American Bank Note Company and has an ornate border around it. This item has the printed signatures of the Company's President and Secretary and is over 30 years old. Dawson Geophysical Company is a provider of onshore seismic data acquisition services in United States. The Company acquires and processes two-dimensional (2-D), three-dimensional (3-D) and multi-component seismic data for its clients, ranging from major oil and gas companies to independent oil and gas operators, as well as, providers of multi-client data libraries. Its clients rely on seismic data to identify areas where subsurface conditions are favorable for the accumulation of hydrocarbons and to optimize the development and production of hydrocarbon reservoirs. During the fiscal year ended September 30, 2008 (fiscal 2008), all of its revenues were derived from 3-D seismic data acquisition operations. As of September 30, 2008, it operated 16 3-D seismic data acquisition crews in the lower 48 states of the United States and a seismic data processing center. (Source: 10-K) 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.