5 Cents The Trade Winds

Trade Winds was a Wallace, Idaho mining operation — the "AS Consol' O.M." designation almost certainly refers to the Consolidated Old Mission mine group in the Coeur d'Alene district. Company scrip of this type was issued to advance wages or facilitate purchases at company-affiliated stores, a practice that persisted in remote Idaho mining camps well into the postwar decades despite federal scrutiny of scrip systems following Depression-era abuses.

The eight-year window of 1965–1973 suggests these circulated as a practical convenience rather than a response to any specific coin shortage, though the 1965 date aligns with widespread small-denomination scrip revivals triggered by the U.S. coinage crisis of that year.