Beautifully engraved Specimen certificate from the FTD.COM - Delaware . This historic document was printed by the Northern Banknote Company and has an ornate border around it with a vignette of the FTD.COM company logo.
Certificate Vignette
FTD.COM is an Internet and telephone marketer of flowers and specialty gifts. Founded by FTD, the world's largest floral services organization, FTD.COM sells directly to consumers through its Web site, www.ftd.com, and its 1-800-SEND-FTD telephone number. Utilizing independent FTD florists who adhere to the highest quality and service standards, FTD.COM provides same-day delivery of floral orders to nearly 100 percent of the U.S. population. FTD.COM offers a wide variety of unique floral arrangements and specialty gifts for holidays and other occasions. FTD.COM became a public company through an Initial Public Offering in September 1999 and announced its profitability just one year after its IPO, in October 2000. On June 27, 2002, FTD.COM merged back with its parent, FTD,Inc., to leverage the strengths of FTD's business-to-business operations and increase its growth opportunities.
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 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 and realized nice appreciation in value over the past several years.