S. Klein Department Stores, Inc. - New York

Beautifully engraved SPECIMEN certificate from the S. Klein Department Stores, Inc. This historic document was printed by the Columbian Banknote Company and has an ornate border around it with a vignette of an S. Klein building between an allegorical man and woman. This item has the printed signatures of the Company’s President and Secretary.








Certificate Vignette

The discount department store industry took shape in the years following World War II when Americans went on a buying binge to satisfy pent up demands for consumer goods in short supply during the war years.

But the industry's beginning can be traced back to the turn of the century when "undersellers," the discounters of their day, sold apparel and soft goods at low markups that undercut conventional department store prices.

In 1912, S. Klein started its "underselling" business when it opened a small store in Union Square in downtown New York. The company founded by Samuel Klein was one of four soft goods-oriented undersellers, one hard lines retailer and two grocery/general merchandise merchants that predate the post-war advent of the discount industry.

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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 and realized nice appreciation in value over the past several years.