5 Cents Voucher St-Césaire General Store

Jos. Plamondon's general store scrip from St-Césaire is a good example of the small-denomination merchant tokens that proliferated in rural Quebec in the late nineteenth century, filling the chronic gap left by a shortage of low-value Dominion of Canada coinage in circulation. Five-cent pieces were especially prone to hoarding and disappearance from everyday trade, making fractional scrip a practical necessity rather than an affectation. Plamondon issued these on thin cardboard rather than the heavier stock used by larger urban merchants — cheap to produce, and never intended to outlast the commercial relationship they represented.