Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire S&H Green Stamps.

Grandma used em' to get my first new sheath knife,a Schrade Walden.Still got it.

Wow, what a memory sparker here! My mom and dad saved them, and I remember the store we could go to and spend the books of stamps. Stores offering double or triple stamp days instead of lower cash prices.

I often wonder what did them in.

My brother got Grandmothers Remmington 511 and I got the True Temper hatchet both were purchased with S&H Green stamps. I still use the hatchet to split kindling and he still kills squirrels with the rifle. Lotta memories in this thread.
Bill

Somewhere, I have a tennis racket around here purchased with Green Stamps. Were around the central valley in CA till at least 88-90. Worked at a grocery store that handed them out, Green Stamp store in the same shopping/strip mall in 87. Blue chips too.

They were still around as long as 72. My grandma got a Glenfield model 75 with stamps that was made in 1972. I inherited it in the late 90's.

I had no idea! Their still around.

This from Wikipedia:

History

S&H Green Stamps sign preserved on a grocery store building in California.

A repurposed S&H Green Stamps sign in 1973 (see 1973 oil crisis).
Sperry & Hutchinson began offering stamps to U.S. retailers in 1896. The retail organizations that distributed the stamps (primarily supermarkets, gasoline filling stations, and shops) bought the stamps from S&H and gave them as bonuses to shoppers based on the dollar amount of a purchase. The stamps�issued in denominations of one, ten, and fifty points�were perforated with a gummed reverse, and as shoppers accumulated the stamps they moistened the reverse and mounted them in collectors books, which were provided free by S&H. The books contained 24 pages and to fill a page required 50 points, so each book contained 1200 points. Shoppers could then exchange filled books for premiums, including housewares and other items, from the local Green Stamps store or catalog. Each premium was assigned a value expressed by the number of filled stamp books required to obtain that item.

Green Stamps were one of the first retail loyalty programs,[1] retailers purchased the stamps from the operating company and then gave them away at a rate determined by the merchant. Some shoppers would choose one merchant over another because they gave out more stamps per dollar spent.[2]

The company also traded overseas. During the early 1960s, it initiated S&H Pink Stamps in the United Kingdom, having been beaten to their green shield trademark during 1958 by Richard Tompkins's Green Shield Trading Stamp Company.[3]

The program had its greatest popularity during the mid-1960s, but a series of recessions during the 1970s decreased sales of green stamps and the stamp programs of their competitors. The value of the rewards declined substantially during the same period, requiring either far more stamps to get a worthwhile item or spending money for an item that was barely discounted from the price at regular stores, creating a general downward spiral as fewer and fewer people saw them as worth the trouble.

In 1972, the company was brought before the Supreme Court for violating the unfairness doctrine. In Federal Trade Commission v. Sperry & Hutchinson Trading Stamp Co., the court held that restricting the trade of the stamps was illegal.

Sperry and Hutchinson was sold by the founders' successors in 1981, and was purchased from a holding firm by a member of the founding Sperry family in 1999. At that time, only about 100 U.S. stores were offering Green Stamps. Eventually, with the rise of the Internet and the World Wide Web, the company modified its practices, and it now offers "greenpoints" as rewards for online purchases.[4] These Greenpoints can also be earned and used at some markets, for example Freshtown in NY State (others may offer them also).[citation needed] In addition, any old Green Stamps can be traded in for GreenPoints and used to this day.[citation needed]

I think it was around 1963ish, that my mother gave me 11 books of S&H stamps to get a 12 gauge M37 Winchester shotgun. It was the only 12 gauge I owned for a few years until I turned 17 and bought an AH Fox Sterlingworth for 75 bucks of lawn mowing money!
I lost the 37 overboard ten years later while shark fishing, but still have the Sterlingworth..........memories!
1D

I got my first set of binox with them and various camping items. I can still taste the dmned things!

got my first baseball glove with Green Stamps... nice thread, thanks

yep my gramdma collected them


lol, I can remember getting several of those books filled and her gettin somethin for FREE!

doubt if folks that win the lottery are much happier than she was in those moments.

she'd known poor, her and her brother each got a new toothbrush for Xmas one year. Yep that was it, they were livin high on the hog.

Growing up in rural Virginia in the 50's & 60's Green Stamps were big. My dads small grocery store gave them out. Specials got double stamps & I believe Wednesday was double stamp day. Back then most shoppers felt it was getting something for nothing, but actually the cost was reflected in higher prices.

My mother got me a Mitchell spinning reel with them back in the sixties. It wasn't the 300, but a smaller model. In the early seventies my first ex-wife got me a little sheet metal storage box with pull out plastic drawers to store small reloading items in...I've still got it today.

my mom used to get stuff with them all the time. i guess it was like rewards points on a credit card.

I remember them vividly. Like crack back in the day for Moms.

Mom bought me a bicycle for my newspaper route with them.

Gold Bond stamps too.

Those were big in the midwest. Curt Carlson started them and went on to become a billionaire.

Jerry

While Green Stamps were by far the most popular where I grew up in Boise, we also had Gold Strike. Those are the only 2 I can remember. Mom saved Green stamps almost as a ritual. We got a lot of stuff over the years with them. She would save up a pile of them then assign us kids to do the pasting in the books. Nobody could lick that many and live so we'd sit around the table with wet rags to glue them in.

Wow this brings back memories. My mom saved them in the 60s when I was a kid. When she had enough it was a big deal to load up and go to the big town (Macon, GA) to the Green Stamp store and trade them in. My parents didn't have a lot of money and they were able to get kitchen appliances and things they needed for the house. Those were the days a trip to Macon, GA. was a big event and a lot of fun. Things were a lot simpler back then.