1 Cent - Chet's Master Market Pueblo, Colorado

Chet's Master Market was a regional grocery operation out of Pueblo, Colorado. This one-cent card token belongs to a category of merchant scrip that proliferated across the American interior during the mid-twentieth century, typically issued to smooth over change-making problems when coin shortages bit into daily retail operations. Pueblo's industrial base — anchored by the CF&I steel works — made small-denomination scrip practical in a working-class town where high transaction volumes at grocery counters created real change float problems.