Mary Carter Paint Co. - Owned 75% of Paradise Island - Specimen Stock Certificate - Awesome History
Inv# SE2745 Specimen Stock
Color: Green, Brown, Orange, or Burgundy. Specimen Stock printed by Security-Columbian Banknote Company. Please specify color.
Established in New Jersey in 1927, Mary Carter Paint Company initially operated as a conventional paint manufacturing and retail franchise renowned for its proprietary product lines. By the 1950s and 1960s, the company expanded into a substantial enterprise with factory stores primarily situated across Florida. During this period, the company emerged as a pivotal player in a significant legal landmark when the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) challenged its deceptive “buy one, get one free” advertising strategy. As the company lacked a history of selling individual cans of paint at the advertised base price, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the 1965 case FTC v. Mary Carter Paint Co. that allocating the cost of two cans to one single item and labeling the second can as “free” constituted illegal consumer misrepresentation.
In the mid-1960s, the corporate leadership experienced a decline in enthusiasm for the paint market and embarked on an aggressive diversification strategy that fundamentally transformed the business. Under the leadership of James Crosby, the firm acquired vast tracts of land in the Bahamas, specifically purchasing a 75 percent interest in Paradise Island in 1966. Subsequently, the organization developed the territory with luxury hotels and inaugurated the Paradise Island Casino in 1967. In 1968, the company divested its entire paint division and officially rebranded as Resorts International. While the core corporate entity eventually transitioned into the contemporary casino and resort industry—later attracting the investment of prominent figures such as Donald Trump and Merv Griffin—the original “Mary Carter” moniker inadvertently achieved permanent immortality within American jurisprudence. The name continues to be widely employed in the legal field today to describe a “Mary Carter Agreement,” a contentious and clandestine litigation settlement structure originating from a 1967 Florida traffic accident lawsuit involving the company’s remaining commercial liabilities.
Stock and Bond Specimens are made and usually retained by a printer as a record of the contract with a client, generally with manuscript contract notes such as the quantity printed. Specimens are sometimes produced for use by the printing company's sales team as examples of the firms products. These are usually marked "Specimen" and have no serial numbers.
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