1 Cent - Shopping Bag Food Stores Inc.

Shopping Bag Food Stores was a regional supermarket chain operating primarily in California from the 1940s through the 1970s, and like many American retailers of that period, it issued its own scrip to encourage customer loyalty and smooth small-denomination transactions at the checkout. These merchant tokens and paper issues occupied a legal grey area — technically redeemable only at the issuer's own locations, which kept them outside federal currency regulations.

Paper retail scrip of this type survives almost entirely by accident, stuffed in drawers or tucked into old wallets. The chain was absorbed through acquisition, leaving no institution to honor redemptions.