Beautifully engraved RARE specimen preferred stock certificate from the <font color="#0000FF">Hendee Manufacturing Co.</font> makers of the original Indian Motortcycle. This historic document was printed by the American Banknote Company and has an ornate border around it with a native man with feather in hair at top with "Indian Motocycle" printed around the image.
The "Indian Motocycle Co." was founded as the Hendee Manufacturing Company by George M. Hendee in 1897 to manufacture bicycles. These were initially badged as "Silver King" and "Silver Queen" brands but the name "American Indian", quickly shortened to just "Indian", was adopted by Hendee from 1898 onwards because it gave better product recognition in export markets. Oscar Hedstrom joined in 1900. Both Hendee and Hedstrom were former bicycle racers and manufacturers, and after building three prototypes they teamed up to produce a motorcycle with a 1.75 bhp, single-cylinder engine. The motorcycle was successful and sales increased dramatically during the next decade. Historic stock certificate from this famous motorcycle company.
The company changed its name fully to "Indian Motocycle" in 1923. Hendee Manufacturing Company initially produced the motorcycles, but the name was changed to the Indian Motorcycle Manufacturing Company in 1923.
The Indian Motorcycle factory team took the first three places in the 1911 Isle of Man Tourist Trophy. During the 1910s, Indian Motorcycle became the largest manufacturer of motorcycles in the world. Indian Motorcycle's most popular models were the Scout, made from 1920 to 1946, and the Chief, made from 1922 until 1953, when the Indian Motocycle Manufacturing Company went bankrupt. Various organizations tried to perpetuate the Indian Motorcycle brand name in subsequent years, with limited success.
In 2011, Polaris Industries purchased Indian Motorcycles and moved operations from North Carolina and merged them into their existing facilities in Minnesota and Iowa. Since August 2013, Polaris has marketed multiple modern Indian motorcycles that reflect Indian Motorcycle's traditional styling.
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.
