1 Cent - Jewel Tea Co., Inc. Melrose Park, Illinois

Jewel Tea operated a door-to-door delivery model across the American Midwest for much of the twentieth century, and its corporate scrip was a practical tool for managing small-denomination transactions between route salesmen and household customers. These internal trade tokens — whether paper or otherwise — kept change calculations simple on the doorstep and subtly encouraged redemption back through Jewel Tea's own product lines rather than through cash refunds.

Whether this specific cent denomination was issued pre- or post-war matters for dating, as Jewel Tea's operations and branding shifted considerably after the company merged with American Stores in 1984.