2 Cents Ohio Sales Tax Receipt

Ohio's sales tax receipt system required merchants to issue these small-denomination tokens as proof of tax collected on low-value purchases. The paper version was introduced alongside aluminum and fiber coin-shaped tokens as a cheaper alternative to producing physical discs in large quantities during the wartime material shortages of the mid-1940s.

The watermark is the notable technical feature here — unusual for something this utilitarian, and included specifically to deter counterfeiting at a denomination of almost no individual financial value, which says something about how seriously states took tax receipt fraud in this period.