Care Coupon 1951, June

CARE launched its coupon program in 1946 as a mechanism for Americans to send food packages to specific recipients in postwar Europe and Asia — essentially a remittance-in-kind scheme that bypassed the chronic foreign exchange shortages crippling most European economies at the time. By 1951, the acute starvation phase had passed, but the coupons had evolved into a broader aid instrument used to funnel goods through CARE's procurement and distribution network rather than direct package delivery.

These are not currency in any monetary sense and were never legal tender. Collectors typically encounter them in the ephemera and scrip categories, and June 1951 dating places this squarely in the Korean War period, when CARE was simultaneously expanding operations into East Asia.