Featured Anyone remember S&H (Sperry & Hutchinson) Green Stamps?

They were given out at cash registers, usually in grocery stores. For a certain expenditure, you'd receive a commensurate value of stamps.



I remember my dad pasting them in a small book, they you could redeem them for merchandise; so many books for each item. They obtained this reproduction clock with three books of stamps.



I also found this ashtray in my parents' belongings but not sure it was a redeemed item or a garage sale purchase.

 

I recall them well, from my late teens. I've got a story I'll post here soon about how that worked for the retail folks who offered S&H Green Stamps as 'incentives' for purchase (an' there were a few other brands with the same schtick).

 

Oh yes, I remember those. We used to get them and glue them into the book.

I can not remember how long ago it was, but a local supermarket near me was still part of that program. I eventually had enough points to buy somethings. I was able to get a Fiesta pitcher in yellow and a Sunbeam Electric Mixer.
The mixer is still in the box, I never opened it. The Yellow pitcher, I gave to my super for his MIL as I no longer wanted to sell it and she collects Fiesta ware.

 

I remember the stamps; my mother collected them for a while.

 

We used to get Green Stamps and Blue Chip Stamps! Both of my sisters worked at the Blue Chip Redemption store. They had a lot of nice stuff you could get! I still have Mama's melamine salad bowl, servers and 6 individual salad bowls. It's somewhere in the basement.

Linda

 

I recall my mom having those books full of those stamps...a sloppy mess by the time it was full

 

True. By the time I used them as an adult, the grocery store racked up points on the register so no more mess. I do remember that to get the mixer I had to pay shipping.

 

I was always so excited to go to the green stamp store ! I remember one time my mom and all my aunts saved up to buy another aunt a "satin" bedspread for her wedding present . Oh the glamour ! Oh the luxury ! Hmmm maybe thats why i have this overwhelming need to acquire .

 

It's 1957, a Mobil Oil service station onna NE corner of La Jolla Blvd an' Pearl Street. Gas was 19 to 23 cents a gallon, depending on what the other 2 stations on the same cross-street were charging. I'm a pump-jockey an' lube assistant, making ~85 cents an hour, part time. Green Stamps were an unquestioned necessity for all purchases, even in affluent neighborhoods...I forget how many stamps were required to be offered for each dollar spent.
The man who sold them to the owner of the station drove a new Fleetwood Cadillac sedan, an' had a diamond solitaire pinkie ring of well in excess of 2 carats. He was always well dressed an' perfumed; he was at the time the fattest male I had ever seen, probably 300 pounds. He would drive onto the station every couple weeks, stop wherever he pleased, frequently blocking one of the only 2 pump islands. After heaving himself outta the Caddy, with a book of S&H stamps in his hand (~1/2" thick, 8" X 10") he proceeded directly to what passed for an office in the small steel building that housed the cash register an' the lube-bay, where the Boss would be waiting, unsmiling, with something like $300 in cash...the transaction took only seconds. The fat man, grinning like a Cheshire Cat, waddled back to his car, got in an' left as if he were going to a fire...tho' he only drove across the street to the other stations sharing the corner. As a kid, I was well aware of the level of scam I watched...but that was the game then, an it played out universally, as far as I know.

 

There was a similar scheme offered in England by the co-op. I remember my gran collecting them when I was a kid. Just looked it up and apparently they do digital stamps now. I guess they all do to a degree. Tesco club cards. Lidl plus etc.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/BHWs0wiJRge4mdK4DWDKIQ#:~:text=Dividend Stamps introduced as an,Property of Robert Pool

 

I even remember "plaid stamps" briefly. I don't think they were as popular here as the green stamps.