Beautiful engraved RARE specimen Gold Bond Certificate from the Southern Bell Telephone and Telegraph Company dated 1911. This historic document was printed by American Bank Note Company and has an ornate border around it with a vignette of an allegorical woman and cherubs holding an early telephone receiver. This item is over 97 years old.
Certificate Vignette BellSouth Telecommunications, Inc. is the Bell Operating Company of AT&T that serves the southeastern United States. BellSouth Telecommunications was formed on January 1, 1992 when BellSouth merged its operating companies, Southern Bell and South Central Bell, into one entity. BellSouth Telecommunications was previously a holding of BellSouth Corporation but was acquired by AT&T Inc on December 29, 2006. BellSouth Telecommunications/AT&T Southeast regional headquarters are located in the AT&T Midtown Center building in Atlanta, Georgia. BellSouth Corporation's headquarters were located in the Campanile building in Atlanta. Southern Bell Telephone & Telegraph Company was the Bell Operating Company serving the states of Georgia, Florida, North Carolina and South Carolina. Southern Bell also operated in Charleston and other parts of West Virginia from 1883 until 1917, when C&P Telephone took over operations. On December 20, 1967 Southern Bell Telephone and Telegraph Company forms South Central Bell Telephone Company to operate in five of its nine states. Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee. A similar arrangement occurred in 1961 when Pacific Northwest Bell was formed from Pacific Telephone. In 1984, Southern Bell became a holding of BellSouth Corporation. Southern Bell was headquartered in (what is now) the BellSouth Center building in Atlanta, Georgia. South Central Bell Telephone Company was the name of the Bell System's operations in Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee. South Central Bell was created in July 1968 when the Bell telephone operations in those states were split off from Southern Bell, similar to how Pacific Northwest Bell split off from Pacific Telephone & Telegraph around the same time period. In 1984, South Central Bell became a holding of BellSouth Corporation, effectively reuniting South Central Bell with Southern Bell. South Central Bell was headquartered in (what is now) the BellSouth City Center building in Birmingham, Alabama. BellSouth Services, Inc. was the name of the shared service company formed to provide common functions such as engineering and information technology across the nine state Southern Bell and South Central Bell operating region. The division was headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama. BellSouth Services was merged with the operating companies in 1992 into BellSouth Telecommunications. On January 1, 1992, BellSouth merged Southern Bell, South Central Bell, and BellSouth Services into a single operating company, BellSouth Telecommunications, Inc., one year after US West had done the same by creating U S West Communications. The merger recreated Southern Bell before the South Central Bell split-off. BellSouth Telecommunications continued to do business as Southern Bell and South Central Bell until 1995, when corporate name BellSouth was used. AT&T Midtown Center, BellSouth Telecommunications (d/b/a AT&T Southeast) headquarters, Atlanta On March 5, 2006, AT&T announced its intentions to acquire BellSouth Corporation, and on December 29, 2006 BellSouth Telecommunications became an operating company of AT&T under the name AT&T-Southeast. BellSouth Telecommunications ceased doing business under the BellSouth name on June 30, 2007.

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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 over the past several years.