Beautifully engraved SCARCE SPECIMEN certificate from the Golden West Financial Corporation. This historic document was printed by the American Banknote Company and has an ornate border around it with a vignette of the company logo. This item has the printed signatures of the Company's President ( Herbert Sandler ). 
Certificate Vignette Golden West Financial Corporation is a savings and loan holding company, the principal business of which is the operation of a savings bank business through its wholly owned savings bank subsidiary, World Savings Bank, FSB (WSB). Golden West also has two other operating subsidiaries, Atlas Advisers, Inc. and Atlas Securities, Inc. These two companies were formed to provide services to Atlas Assets, Inc., a registered open-end management investment company sponsored by the Company. Atlas Advisers is a registered investment adviser and the investment manager of Atlas Assets' 14 portfolios (the Atlas Funds). Atlas Securities is a registered broker-dealer and the sole distributor of Atlas Fund shares. The principal business of the Company, through WSB, is attracting funds from the investing public and the capital markets and investing those funds principally in loans secured by deeds of trust or mortgages on residential real estate, and mortgage-backed securities.
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 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.
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 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.
