Beautifully engraved SPECIMEN certificate from the National Terminals Corporation. This historic document was printed by the Republic Banknote Company in the 1920's and has an ornate border around it with a vignette of an allegorical woman and child in front of a smoke billowing manufacturing facility. This item has the printed signatures of the Company's President ( A. B. Efroymson ) and its Treasurer.
Certificate Vignette The company operated the North Pier Terminal at Chicago and the extensive terminals at East Chicago, Indiana, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The warehouse of this company at Chicago, with its three-quarter-mile span, was at the end of Illinois Street, abutting the Chicago River and terminating at its junction with Lake Michigan. 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.