1 Cent - Mad Butcher Chicago, Illinois

Mad Butcher was a discount meat retail chain that operated across the American Midwest, and like many regional grocery and specialty food retailers of the mid-twentieth century, it issued its own scrip as a promotional device — typically redeemable for merchandise or used as change-equivalent tokens to encourage return visits. These cents-denomination paper issues exist in a gray zone between trade coupon and true scrip, and serious collectors of American obsolete and merchant paper tend to treat them accordingly.

Chicago's long history as the center of the American meatpacking industry gives this piece a certain regional coherence, at least.