A certificate is dated by its first line and its last

① The one-line version

No civil register before the country had one (Greece 1925, Portugal 1911, Russia 1918, Germany 1876); the state line by regime; the formula in the language of the day; a pen, then a typewriter, then a printer for the name; no VOID pantograph before 1978, no microtext before the eighties, no hologram before about 1990, no verification code before about 2010 — and no paper share or bearer bond after the country abolished them.

② When the civil register begins

Country	From	What the paper is
England & Wales	1 July 1837	A “certified copy of an entry”: landscape, the register’s columns across it, until the 1968 regulations took effect in 1969; then portrait with numbered boxes. The short birth certificate from 1947. Marriage by the paired registers until May 2021.
United States	by state	County records, then the standard certificates of 1900; every state in the birth registration area by 1933. A certified copy carries a raised seal; before the 1960s it is often a photostat, white on black.
France	1792	Acts in duplicate registers with marginal notes; the copie intégrale and the extrait avec or sans filiation; the livret de famille from 1877.
Germany	1 Jan 1876	The Standesamt (Prussia from 1874): “Vor dem unterzeichneten Standesbeamten erschien heute …”. Before it, the parish book.
Italy	1 Jan 1866	“Avanti di me … Ufficiale dello Stato Civile … è comparso”; certificato, estratto, estratto per riassunto.
Spain	1 Jan 1871	Registro Civil in three sections, cited by Tomo and Folio; certificación literal or en extracto on stamped paper.
Greece	1925 (uniform 1931)	The ληξιαρχείο; before it the δήμος certifies from its rolls, and the church marries. Ν. 344/1976 is the code; civil marriage only from Ν. 1250/1982; the national electronic register from 2013–14.
Portugal	1911	The Conservatória do Registo Civil after the Republic; before it the parish.
Netherlands	1811	The Burgerlijke Stand: “Heden den … compareerde voor ons …”; uittreksel and afschrift.
Türkiye	1926	The civil code of 1926; surnames compulsory from 1935; the nüfus kayıt örneği cited by Cilt, Aile Sıra and Sıra numbers.
Russia	1917–18	Before it the church’s метрическое свидетельство; after it ЗАГС: “о чём в книге записей актов гражданского состояния … произведена запись за №”, with a series such as II-АБ № 123456.

③ Greece, in most depth

• The state line: ΒΑΣΙΛΕΙΟΝ ΤΗΣ ΕΛΛΑΔΟΣ to 1924 and 1935–1973; ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΗ ΔΗΜΟΚΡΑΤΙΑ 1924–1935 and from 1973.
• The language: katharevousa until demotic became the language of administration in 1976 — “ἀνεκηρύχθη πτυχιοῦχος … μετὰ βαθμοῦ”, Ὁ Πρύτανις, Ὁ Κοσμήτωρ — and printed forms went on in the old words for some years after.
• The script: polytonic until the monotonic reform of January 1982. The studio prints the form polytonic before 1982 and the typed names in capitals, which carry no accents in either system.
• The degree: ΠΤΥΧΙΟ with its grade in words and to two decimals (ΑΡΙΣΤΑ 8,50–10, ΛΙΑΝ ΚΑΛΩΣ 6,50–8,49, ΚΑΛΩΣ 5,00–6,49); the Σχολή is the unit before Law 1268/1982, the Τμήμα after; the master’s is the ΜΔΕ from 1992 and the ΔΜΣ from 2018; ΔΙΔΑΚΤΟΡΙΚΟ with its thesis title in guillemets.
• The school-leaving certificate: ΑΠΟΛΥΤΗΡΙΟΝ ΓΥΜΝΑΣΙΟΥ before the late-seventies split, then of the Λύκειο; the grade out of 20 in words and in figures, the conduct (“Κοσμιωτάτη”), a photograph glued and stamped on older forms.

④ Degrees elsewhere

• Britain: “This is to certify that … was admitted to the degree of …”, signed by the Vice-Chancellor and the Registrar; classes of honours in their modern form from 1918, the upper and lower second spreading after the war; no photograph.
• America: the Trustees’ conferral “with all the rights, privileges and honors thereunto appertaining”, or — at the older colleges, well into the twentieth century — Latin, with the graduate’s name in Latin; cum laude from 1869, magna from 1880; a gold foil seal.
• France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Türkiye, Russia: each with its own formula and ladder — licence, maîtrise and doctorat; Diplom, Magister and the Latin Promotionsurkunde, then Bologna’s bachelor and master; the laurea out of 110 e lode; the título “en nombre del Rey”; the carta de curso in valores; drs., mr. and ir. until 2002; lisans and doktora; the Soviet diploma “выдан” to the graduate in the dative.

⑤ Security printing, by year

Years	What the paper carries
1860–1914	Engraved borders and vignettes from the geometric lathe; copperplate fills in iron-gall ink that browns; wafer or wax seals; revenue stamps; landscape registry copies.
1914–1945	Engraved or lithographed; the typewriter arrives in the fills; photostat copies in America; the regime in the header.
1945–1970	Offset safety tints of fine wavy lines; typewritten fills; watermarked paper; the British short certificate; the CUSIP number on American shares from 1969.
1970–1990	The VOID pantograph (patented 1978) that shows on a photocopy; safety papers; microprinted lines.
1990–2010	Holographic foil (credit cards 1983, passports 1985, certificates around 1990 — none before 1985 on anything), UV features, thermochromic seals, laser fills.
2010–2026	Bar codes, QR and online verification codes (gov.gr, e-Devlet); the end of bearer paper across Europe.

The studio draws the look of each feature and none of the substance: the pantograph is dots, the foil is a gradient, and the verification code has the right squares in its corners and noise everywhere else.

⑥ Shares, bonds and their coupons

A share certificate comes from a bound book: the certificate on the right, a counterfoil on the left with the holder, the number and the date, a row of perforations between them. The British one is “given under the Common Seal of the Company” — a red paper wafer, until the Companies Act 1989 made the seal optional on 31 July 1990. The American one is engraved, with a vignette, counters in the corners, the transfer agent’s countersignature and, from 1969, the CUSIP. A bearer bond has a coupon sheet below it: numbered coupons, each payable on its date, the next one due nearest the edge, and a talon to claim a new sheet.

Country	The end of paper or of bearer paper
United States	TEFRA 1982 ended new bearer bonds; direct registration mandatory for listed issues in 2008
France	dematerialised November 1984
Spain	book entries, Ley 24/1988
Italy	D.Lgs. 213/1998
Portugal	bearer shares prohibited, Lei 15/2017
Greece	bearer shares abolished by Ν. 4548/2018, converted by 2020
Netherlands	bearer shares converted by law from 1 January 2020
Türkiye	listed shares dematerialised from 2005; bearer holders registered under Law 7262 (2020)
Britain	share warrants to bearer abolished 26 May 2015; the end of paper certificates planned for 2027
USSR	no shares 1930–1990; the state loan bonds had no coupons — they were drawn for prizes

⑦ Licences and the other papers

• The British dog licence: 7s. 6d. from 1878, 37½p, then 37p, never raised, abolished by the Local Government Act 1988. The wireless licence from 1922; the radio-only one went in 1971.
• No liquor licence in the United States under Prohibition, 1920–1933.
• Revenue stamps on continental papers: χαρτόσημο, marca da bollo, timbre, Stempelmarke, papel timbrado.
• Guarantees: “does not affect your statutory rights” in Britain from the late seventies; “full” or “limited” warranty in America after the 1975 Magnuson–Moss Act.
• The indenture: “This Indenture witnesseth that … doth put himself Apprentice to …”, seven years in the early nineteenth century and five by the twentieth, a hand and a seal for each party, and the wavy cut along the top through the counterpart.

⑧ What is invented, and why a prop line

Every university, registry district, company, club, church and person is made up in the language of the country. The state line is text; no state emblem is ever drawn — the crests are ordinary heraldry put together at random, in the one colour an engraver used, with the hatching that says which tincture each field would be. In several countries it is an offence to pass a copy of a certificate off as the real thing, so a small “film prop” line sits in the bottom margin, where a frame or a hand hides it; the Security panel can turn it off and the Checks panel says so.

⑨ What we could not verify

• The exact text and size of a Greek ΠΤΥΧΙΟ parchment; the layout is reconstructed from the formula and the grade bands, which are confirmed.
• The colours of the English register copies by event — red for birth, green for marriage, grey-violet for death — are what surviving copies show, not a statute.
• Many cut-over years inside the language packs (a ministry’s name, a form’s title, the year the witnesses left a register) are best estimates, marked as such in the studio’s Rules panel.