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1 Cent - Big Bonus Foods Incorporated San Francisco, California
| Issuer | Big Bonus Foods Incorporated |
|---|---|
| Year | |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Dollar (1785-date) |
| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Obverse description | Plain light green paper with a triple-rule rectangular border. Denomination numerals "1c" appear in each corner in bold letterpress type, with "One Cent" in italic bold at centre top. Redemption conditions and issuer name in block capitals fill the central field; no vignette or underprint. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | Unprinted light green paper; the obverse letterpress impression is faintly visible as a mirror-image offset, with the triple-rule border showing through. No intentional design, text, or security elements are present. |
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| Comments |
Big Bonus Foods Incorporated was a supermarket trading stamp operator — these cents circulated as redemption scrip within the company's premium scheme, not as currency in any banking sense. Retailers issued this kind of paper broadly across mid-century America as a loyalty mechanism, and most of it was destroyed through redemption rather than preserved. Schimmel catalogued a significant body of this merchant scrip, much of it from California operators who ran aggressive stamp programs through the 1950s and 1960s.
Survival rates for low-denomination pieces like this are poor — a 1-cent note had almost no collector appeal at the time and was routinely discarded once the premium catalogs stopped printing.