History
For years, owners brought very nice unrestored original cars to Bloomington Gold to become GoldCertified. Naturally, many of them had some character marks and mild deterioration from normal use. They still looked great but were in somewhat less than factory new appearance. Instead of always scoring in the 95-100% range required for a Gold Certificate, they would often score more in the 90-94% range and receive a Silver Certificate instead. Disappointed, owners would often return the next year with the same car restored to “shiny new” and get their Gold Certificate. However, they unwittingly had just destroyed all the character and research information that resides in all unrestored cars—not to mention erasing much of the car’s credibility. To help mitigate this problem, David Burroughs, who created Gold Certification in 1978, created the standards and process for judging original unrestored Corvettes in 1989. Bloomington Gold then immediately registered SURVIVOR® as the brand name for Authenticating Certain Collectible Automobiles with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. So new was the concept that Bloomington Gold needed to write magazine articles in 1990 explaining that Survivor® was a trademark for cars certified by a panel of experts to be nicely preserved unrestored originals. Never in the history of Bloomington Gold or any other automotive forum has any term caught on with more people with more passion; initially among Corvette people and eventually with others in the automotive markets and industry. Now, after nearly 20 years, Bloomington Gold has SURVIVOR Certified® nearly 1,000 Corvettes and the awareness of SURVIVOR is enormous.