Beautifully engraved Specimen Specimen Bond Certificate from the Puerto Rico Water Resource Authority dated 1974. This historic document was printed by the American Banknote Company and has an ornate border around it with a photo vignette of the water purification facility and is over 49 years old.  55 coupons attached on right (not shown in scan).

Certificate Vignette

• Puerto Rico Water Resource Authority (PRWRA) intended that the island have a commercial nuclear power station.  This was finally actually ordered by PRWRA in May 1970.  The plant was to have been a turn-key project with Westinghouse acting as prime contractor to the PRWRA; Westinghouse hired architect-engineer firm GIbbs & Hill to design the plant.  The unit was to have been a smallish, two loop PWR rated 1785 MWt / 614 MWe gross / 583 MWe net, and was to have been located in Salinas, Puerto Rico.  The name for the plant was to have been "Aguirre," but the project was stalled almost from the beginning.  After lingering mostly as a dream for years, the plant was cancelled officially by PRWRA in 1978.

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.