1 Cent - Bi-Lo Food Stores New York

Bi-Lo Food Stores was a regional supermarket chain that issued its own scrip tokens and paper coupons as part of promotional and change-making schemes common among independent grocers in mid-twentieth century America. These small-denomination paper pieces — fractions of a dollar — circulated within individual store ecosystems rather than any broader monetary network, functioning as rounding devices in an era when penny-exact change was both expected and operationally inconvenient at scale.

New York's independent grocery trade was intensely competitive, and store-specific scrip helped lock customers into repeat visits. Whether this piece was ever formally redeemed in quantity is unknown.