1 Cent - Food Stamp Scrip Elam Grocery

Food stamp scrip of this kind proliferated briefly in the late 1960s as a workaround to a genuine administrative problem: the federal Food Stamp Program, relaunched nationally in 1964, issued coupons in fixed denominations, leaving retailers unable to make change when a purchase fell short of a round figure. Individual stores issued their own fractional scrip — redeemable only in-house — to plug the gap. The practice was tolerated for a few years before federal authorities moved to standardize change-making procedures and effectively killed off private scrip of this type by the early 1970s.

Elam Grocery & Market is a minor issuer with no known catalog prominence. Single-store scrip from this period survives largely by accident.