S&H Green Stamps Take a Licking
Are you old enough to
remember those annoying, seemingly multiplying green stamps that your mother
insisted you help paste into the booklet? As children, we spent long hours
licking and sticking stamps so they could be redeemed for a unique household
item by our thrifty mothers.
Trading stamps were originated in 1891 by Thomas Alexander Sperry of
Bridgeport, Connecticut. In 1896 Sperry organized the Sperry and Hutchinson
Company to utilize the stamps. Their S&H Green Stamps were a form of
trading stamps
and rewards program popular in the United States between the 1930’s and early
1980’s.
A 1956 women’s magazine proclaimed that S&H green stamps “are one of the most
satisfying things you’ll ever do.” You were given your choice of over 1,500
nationally famous products for your home, your hobby, or your favorite sport.
And not one of them would cost you a penny! It was thrifty and it was smart.
Collect enough of them and face licking them and sticking them into
collector’s books (a pastime often given to amuse children), and the shopper
could claim valuable prizes from the local Green Stamp store or from their
catalog. Armed with stacks of completed books, we often made pilgrimages to the
Green Stamp store in our home town and redeemed them for a myriad of must-have
items.
During the 1960s, the rewards catalog printed by the company was the largest
publication in the
United States,
and the company issued three times as many stamps as the
U.S. Postal Service.
Customers would receive stamps at the checkout counter of
supermarkets,
department stores,
and
gas stations
among other
retailers,
which could then be redeemed for products in the catalog.
What could you purchase for one complete book in 1965? You could redeem your
book for a set of six mugs in pastel colors, a record rack, a set of glasses
with gold rims, or a cigarette box with a paisley-patterned lid. A 19”
television would take 88 filled books, a Kodak Brownie 8 Movie Camera was 13 ¼
books, and a Silver Cloud motor boat (sans the outboard motor!) would require
170 of your books.
Currently the company, now called Green Shield Stamps, operates as S&H
Solutions and offers S&H greenpoints, a digital version of Green Stamps,
which can be earned online and in participating grocery locations. Happily, we
are no long required to lick and stick, but now we simply go on-line and point
and click.
By Cheryl Miller
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