Catalog
1 Cent - Mini-Mart Inc.
| Issuer | Mini-Mart, Inc. |
|---|---|
| Year | |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Dollar (1785-date) |
| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Size | Log in to see details |
| Shape | Log in to see details |
| Printer | Log in to see details |
| Designer(s) | Log in to see details |
| Engraver(s) | Log in to see details |
| In circulation to | Log in to see details |
| Reference(s) | Log in to see details |
| Obverse description | Plain white ground with black letterpress printing throughout. A line-art vignette at left depicts a shopping cart loaded with groceries, captioned below in bold type "Food Stamp Credit". The issuer's name "MINI-MART, INC." is set in large bold capitals at upper centre-right, with the denomination "ONE CENT" at mid-centre and the numeral value "$.01" in large bold type at lower right. A cursive facsimile signature appears below the denomination at right, and the redemption legend runs along the lower margin. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | MINI-MART, INC. FOOD STAMP CREDIT ONE CENT $.01 REDEEMABLE AT ANY MINI-MART STORE |
| Reverse description | Log in to see details |
| Reverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Signature(s) | Log in to see details |
| Protection type | Log in to see details |
| Protection description | Log in to see details |
| Variants | Log in to see details |
| Comments |
Mini-Mart, Inc. was a US convenience store chain that issued its own scrip for use within its stores — a practice more common among company towns and industrial employers in the nineteenth century, but revived sporadically by retailers in the twentieth as a promotional or change-management tool. These small-denomination paper pieces functioned as fractional currency substitutes, particularly useful when coin shortages made exact-change transactions cumbersome.
Documentation on this specific issuer's scrip program is thin. Without confirmed print run data or redemption records, the circulation history remains difficult to characterize beyond its obvious small-denomination retail purpose.