1 Cent Arizona; Luxury Tax

Arizona's 1933 luxury tax tokens — paper rather than the aluminum or brass used by most other states — were issued under emergency revenue measures during the depths of the Depression, when collecting fractional sales tax on small purchases required physical scrip to make change. The State Tax Commission opted for paper partly on cost grounds, producing some of the smallest-format currency-adjacent documents in American fiscal history at just 24 x 22 mm.

Paper issues degraded quickly in everyday pocket use, which is why intact examples are considerably harder to locate than the metal equivalents issued concurrently by neighboring states.