Canadian Pacific Railway Company - Canada 1913

Beautifully engraved specimen certificate from Canadian Pacific Railway Company dated 1913. This historic document was printed by American Bank Note Company and has an ornate border around it with a vignette of a steam engine train passing a farmer working his crops. This item is over 93 years old.






Certificate Vignette

Canadian Pacific Railway was formed to physically unite Canada from coast to coast. Canada's confederation on July 1, 1867, united four eastern British North American provinces into a new country. Nova Scotia and New Brunswick were promised the Intercolonial Railway to link them with Central Canada - Quebec and Ontario. Manitoba, around the Prairies Red River settlement, joined confederation in 1870. And British Columbia, on the west coast, was enticed into confederation in 1871.

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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.