50 Cents Island Creek Stores Company

Island Creek Stores Company operated as a company store serving coal miners in Logan County, West Virginia — the kind of captive retail system where workers were paid partly in scrip redeemable only at the company's own store, effectively keeping wages circulating back to the employer. This 50-cent piece is a product of that arrangement. The narrow strip format is characteristic of the low-denomination scrip used throughout the Appalachian coalfields during the early twentieth century, where cheap production mattered and forgery was not a serious concern — who else would accept it?