1 Cent - Safeway Stores, Incorporated Kansas City, Missouri

Safeway issued these fractional paper coupons during the mid-1970s to address a practical problem: the U.S. coin shortage of that decade made giving exact change in small grocery transactions genuinely awkward. Several large retail chains adopted similar in-house scrip systems as a stopgap. The Kansas City designation on these notes reflects a regional distribution point rather than a corporate headquarters — Safeway's actual head office was in Oakland, California.

Not legal tender, not redeemable for cash — usable only toward future Safeway purchases, which is precisely why so many were simply discarded rather than spent.