Old Kent Financial Corporation - Michigan 1997

Beautiful Rare specimen stock certificate from the Old Kent Financial Corporation printed in 1997. This historic document has an ornate border around it with a vignette of George Washington. This item has the printed signatures of the Company's Chairman of the Board, and Secretary.


Certificate



Old Kent Financial Corporation was headquartered in Grand Rapids, Michigan and had $23.8 billion in assets. Old Kent Financial Corporation was a financial services holding company headquartered in Grand Rapids, Michigan. It operated approximately 300 banking offices in Michigan, Illinois and Indiana. At December 31, 2000, Old Kent had total assets of $23.8 billion.

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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 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. This is an exciting sector of the hobby that has grown in popularity over the past several years.