1 Dollar United States Department of Agriculture Food Coupon

USDA Food Coupons occupy an odd corner of American notaphily — they are not currency in any central bank sense, yet they functioned as a parallel payment instrument in retail grocery transactions for decades. This series, issued under the Food Stamp Act framework, was produced by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, the same facility responsible for Federal Reserve Notes, which accounts for the security watermark and the overall quality of the substrate.

The program's coupon design was overhauled in 1990 specifically to combat counterfeiting, which had become a genuine operational problem for the USDA by the late 1980s. Electronic Benefits Transfer eventually made these paper instruments obsolete; most states had fully transitioned away from coupons by 2004.