1 Cent - South Side Market Pueblo, Colorado

Merchant scrip from Pueblo, Colorado occupies a narrow and often overlooked corner of American fiscal history. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, retail establishments across the Rocky Mountain West routinely issued their own fractional currency to compensate for chronic shortages of small-denomination federal coinage — a problem that plagued inland commercial centers far from Federal Reserve distribution points.

The South Side Market's card scrip at this size runs noticeably larger than most contemporary merchant tokens, which were typically struck in metal. Card issues this dimensions are more fragile and survival rates are correspondingly low.