Sucker! If You Pay Over Ceiling Prices (1946), Bausili for the OPA

Sucker! If You Pay Over Ceiling Prices is a 1946 Office of Price Administration poster signed Bausili. A hand marked BLACK MARKET slides a steak across a cutting board while a second hand holds a five-dollar bill, and the headline calls the buyer a sucker. Sheet INF-P2446 (NAID 515507).

The picture

The sheet is printed in orange and brown. A steak sits on a cutting board. One hand, stenciled BLACK MARKET, slides it across; a second hand holds out a five-dollar bill. Over the exchange runs the one-word headline, set apart with its own exclamation mark.

SUCKER !

BLACK MARKET

IF YOU PAY OVER

CEILING PRICES

[signature: Bausili]

[imprint:] UNITED STATES OFFICE OF PRICE ADMINISTRATION - WASHINGTON 25, D. C. - INF-P2446 (3-46)

[imprint:] U. S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE : 1946-O-[illegible]

Who is the target

This sheet points at the buyer, not the seller. The archive tags it with name-calling and fear appeal: the insult lands on the person holding the money, and the BLACK MARKET label ties an ordinary purchase of meat to an illegal sale. The reader is not told what the ceiling price for this steak was, or what happens to a buyer who pays more. The sheet relies on embarrassment instead.

Shame here does work that enforcement would otherwise do. A government that sets prices by law and then calls the people who pay above them suckers is asking for compliance through social pressure as well as statute. Some readers will see that as a fair civic reminder; others will see a federal agency lecturing adults about their own money. The poster itself only shows the insult.

Series and related pages

The imprint code INF-P2446 is followed by "(3-46)," and the archive dates the sheet to 1946. The archive holds a second OPA sheet under the same one-word headline, Sucker!, with a different picture: a $2.00 price card on a carton stenciled with a $1.00 ceiling. This site does not write it up separately. Other Office of Price Administration posters on this site are Don't Feed Black Market Greed, also 1946, and Help Your OPA Fight Inflation, which argues from the economy rather than from shame. The 1943 sheet Rationing Means a Fair Share for All of Us makes the fairness case.