5 Dollars United States Department of Agriculture Food Coupon [Type I]

Food coupons — the physical booklet stamps distributed under the federal Food Stamp Program — were printed by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, the same facility responsible for Federal Reserve notes and postage stamps. The USDA contracted the BEP for this work precisely because the coupons required security printing to resist counterfeiting, a problem that had plagued the original 1939–1943 program. The Type I designation distinguishes this series from the redesigned issues introduced after 1973, when coupon formats were revised in response to fraud and redemption irregularities uncovered during the program's rapid post-1969 expansion.

Redemption records were not systematically archived, so genuine unused examples are scarcer than their large print runs suggest.