S&h Green Stamps

S&H Green Stamps

By Joseph Parish

For this rant, I would like to transport us back in time when I was growing up and the item I am going to discuss was common. As a child and on until my late teen years and early adulthood, I can recall how my family would take my brother and I shopping each and every Friday evening for groceries. Even after I had entered the military and married my lovely wife, Pam, we would still obtain those Green stamps in exchange for our grocery payment as we shopped. The stamp program was still in effect after we were married in 1969, in fact it continued successfully until 1980 at which time is was discontinued.

One of the more popular grocery stores at the time was the Acme Market. We would pile in the car and within minutes we were parking my father’s 1956 Chevy in the Acme parking lot at the end of High Street. My parents would grab a nearby shopping cart and we would all begin to browse the various shelves in the store, wandering up and down each of the aisles until all our needs were met completely. On each lane in the store my mother and father would pause briefly to comparing the prices of each product and make their final selection. When we had finally completed our shopping my mother and father would push the cart to the front of the store and stand patiently in line at the checkout until their turn arrived and the clerk tallied up our bill. After paying for our food purchased, we would be handed a number of green stamps as a reward for shopping in their store.

Since the S&H Green Stamps were a trading stamp the idea behind all of this was for us to paste them into an empty book provided by Acme markets. This task was generally assigned to us children to complete. As the book filled up, they were redeemable for various gifts found at the store.

As a little background on these stamps the S&H Green Stamp program was the brainchild of Sperry & Hutchinson Company and intended to promote customer loyalty. As we entered the store, we could catch a glimpse of a wire rack holding the large green stamp catalogs from which you could redeem your filled book for a variety of valuable gifts. Occasionally my parents would remove an updated catalog and take it home to review. The problem I noticed as I got older was that as soon as you saved the required number of books for an item the updated catalog changes the number and more were needed.

It wasn't just grocery stores like the Acme Market that gave green stamps away, but you could also obtain them from filling stations and a host of other stores. My parents would often choice venders based upon whether or not they gave out the green stamps. This would naturally increase the number of books they could fill. The venders would purchase the stamps in bulk and for every dollar my parents would spend they would receive one reward stamp in return. The stamps were issued in denominations of one, ten, and fifty points. As I examined the stamps, I could see that each of them was perforated around the edges and had glue on its reverse side similar to the usual postage stamp. As we accumulated the stamps, we would moisten the back and place them in the pages of the book. Counting the pages of the book I found it contained a total of 24 pages with each page required 50 stamps to fill it up. If our total purchase came to fifty dollars, we would receive one 50-point stamp. This would be all that was required on one page.

The gifts provided were various Houseware type items with a book value assigned to it. If you had the correct number of books you could buy the item. I remember how family members would ask each other if they had an extra filled book in order to complete their necessary books so that they could purchase an item they desired. At some later time, they would return the favor and let us borrow a book or two. Although the stamps are no longer used, it is a refreshing though to think back to those happier times when a family shopped together.

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