1 Cent - Sampson Supermarkets Inc. Auburn, Maine

Sampson Supermarkets operated a small regional chain in Maine during the early 1970s, and these fractional cent notes were issued as trading stamps or change tokens at a moment when small-denomination coinage was genuinely inconvenient at checkout. Merchant-issued paper scrip of this type occupied a legal grey area in the United States — technically not currency, technically not redeemable for cash, and consequently unregulated at the federal level.

Almost no commercial scrip from this period and region survives in quantity. Most was redeemed, discarded, or lost when the issuing stores closed.