1 Cent - Big Ben Super Discount Stores Los Angeles, California

Big Ben Super Discount Stores was one of dozens of Southern California retail chains that issued private scrip during the postwar discount retail boom — a marketing device designed to keep customers cycling money back through the same store rather than spending change elsewhere. This particular cent denomination is catalogued by Schimmel, whose reference work remains the primary tool for organizing the sprawling field of American merchant scrip.

Paper merchant scrip of this type was rarely redeemed in full — issuers banked on breakage, the industry term for scrip that customers lose, forget, or simply never bother to redeem.