Beautifully engraved SPECIMEN certificate from the Tokheim Corporation dated 1978. This historic document was printed by the Security-Columbian Banknote Company and has an ornate border with a vignette of a transcript writer next to the Tokheim logo. This item has the printed signatures of the Company's President and Secretary and is over 25 years old. 
Certificate Vignette Tokheim began in an Iowa hardware store a century ago. Merchant John J. Tokheim was searching for a way to improve the "drum and spigot" method of dispensing kerosene and gasoline. In 1898, he invented a pump to do the job. The popularity of his invention, the Tokheim Dome Oil Pump, led to organizing the Tokheim Manufacturing Company in Cedar Rapids, Iowa in 1901. In 1918, a group of Fort Wayne, Indiana executives purchased the company and relocated business operations to Fort Wayne, Indiana. Over the past 100 years, Tokheim has grown to be the world's leading fuel dispenser and systems business through a series of acquisitions and its strategy of technology innovation and quality leadership.
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.
Certificate Vignette
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.
