More Green Stamps
Many of the younger set, may have never heard of S & H Green stamps and their redemption stores. It was a practice that those stores participating in the ‘Stamp’ business gave their customers a stamp for each ten-cent purchase. It was a discount, and ‘ thank you’ for trading with the store. Those stamps were then licked and stuck into ‘books’ that could be traded for merchandise at the S & H Green stamp redemption store. All kinds of merchandise were on display and in their catalog. Toasters, furniture, sports gear, camping equipment, and of course, kitchen dishes were available. A wide range of stores gave ‘Green Stamps’ including businesses that sold groceries, gasoline stations, clothing shops, and even insurance companies. Sperry and Hutchinson founded the business in 1896 and it quickly became popular. The peak of business came in the middle ‘60s. At that time the company printed three times more stamps than the U.S. Postal department. Their catalog printing was the biggest publishing business in the United States.
Alice was one of those persons that saved each stamp she could find. I found a bar-b-que grill in one of the catalogs that I just had to have. I managed to convince her that we really needed that grill. She made a game of the endeavor. She got the kids involved by having them stick the stamps into the books, while she shopped only the stores that gave stamps. Some stores even had double-stamp days and you can bet that is where we shopped. We managed to get the required books to trade for the grill and hurried to the store. The sales lady flipped through the books and found a page or two with missing stamps. Embarrassed, we hurried to the nearest grocery and bought enough supplies to get the required stamps to fill the books. I got pretty good at grilling hot dogs and hamburgers on that bar-b-que grill.
Well those ‘sticky, stampy’ days are gone it looks like. But no they are well and doing great. You can now get, on the Internet, S & H Green ‘points’ that can be redeemed for almost anything you would want. When you buy a ‘Gift Card’ from Starbucks, JC Penny, Shell Gas, Macy’s, Olive Garden and a long list of other businesses they will give you ‘points’ to trade-in for stuff. So if you need desperately a bar-b-que grill, Google S & H Green Points and buy enough gift cards and you will have that cooker in no time. And you don’t need to lick any stamps.
