US Ration Book Four
By the time Ration Book Four came out in late 1943, the OPA had finally figured it all out. Rations stamps were printed in four different styles, a blue wheat sheaf, an orange cornucopia, a green torch (a lá Statue of Liberty), and a black "spare" stamp to be used for all those odd goods for which everyone seemed to use up the red stamps from Books Two & Three. (Some spare stamps were designated for coffee and sugar; the stamps remained the same until the end of the war, even though coffee rationing was discontinued in the United States in late 1943.) The blue, orange, and green stamps were lettered A through Z, and ranged in value from 1 to 8 points. Each page was printed on the same watermarked paper.