S&H Green Stamps (also called Green Shield Stamps) were trading stamps popular in the United States from the 1930s until the late 1980s. They were distributed as part of a rewards program operated by the Sperry and Hutchinson company (S&H), founded in 1896 by Thomas Sperry and Shelly Hutchinson. 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.[1] Customers would receive stamps at the checkout counter of supermarkets, department stores, and gasoline stations among other retailers, which could be redeemed for products in the catalog.
S&H Green Stamps had several competitors, including Triple S Stamps (offered by Grand Union Supermarkets), Gold Bond Stamps, Blue Chip Stamps, and Plaid Stamps (a project of A&P Supermarkets).
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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,[2] 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.[3]
Some states equated the green stamps to gambling and required merchants to obtain an expensive "trading stamp" license. Few did, however, making their popularity vary substantially from state to state. 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.[4]
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.
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, the company modified its practices with the advent of the Internet and now offers "greenpoints" as rewards for online purchases.[5]
The company operated S&H Solutions a sales training and incentives program developed for its own sales force but run as a separate profit center offering services to other employers.
On December 7, 2006, it was announced that S&H Solutions was purchased by San Francisco based Pay By Touch. The purchase price was in excess of $100 million in cash and stock. Pay by Touch has since become bankrupt.
Stephen King attributes his first original short story idea to his mother's use of S&H Green Stamps. The unpublished "Happy Stamps" is about the counterfeiting of (the fictitious) Happy Stamps in order to purchase a house.[6]
In the Beatles' 1964 film A Hard Day's Night, John Lennon jokes to Wilfrid Brambell's grandfather character, "We'll get you the best lawyer Green Stamps can buy."
In a 1987 episode of Night Court titled "A Day in the Life", an elderly prostitute admits to the court that she did it for, among other things, Green Stamps. The bailiffs continue the joke, with Bull Shannon (Richard Moll) asking Marsha Warfield as Rosalind "Roz" Russell, "Can you imagine degrading yourself for Green Stamps?" Roz replies, "Sure. By now I would've had enough for that sailboat."
A Charles Addams cartoon features a mortician offering Green Stamps.
The Wonder Years episode where they have a Christmas party. Norma says to Jack about a coffee maker, " With the green stamps."
On November 8, 1975, on Season 5, Episode 09 of Emergency!, Chester "Chet" Kelly (Timothy "Tim" Donnelly) and John Gage (Randolph Mantooth) are seen licking stamps. Kelly tells Gage as they are about to leave the station, "Four, five, six, seven, eight--hey, hey, wait a minute, fellas! We got enough for that barbecue, so on your way back why don't you just bring it back?" But the Station Fifty-One personnel do not get a barbecue grill; instead, Gage gets diapers for a little baby girl he and Roy DeSoto {Kevin Tighe} had delivered at the start of the show. However, Gage does tell Kelly that they brought back half a book of stamps.
In "54-40 and Fight," episode 15 of the TV sitcom The Brady Bunch that originally aired January 9, 1970, the girls and boys fight over 94 books of trading stamps, each wanting to trade them in for different premiums. Furthermore, they must decide in short order since the trading stamp company is going out of business. After attempts to reach a compromise fail (the boys want a rowboat, the girls want a sewing machine), neither side will give in. Carol and Mike allow their children to compete to build a house of cards with the winner to decide. The girls win, but their sense of compromise eventually prevails when they buy a portable color television set.[7] Although this episode did not specifically reference S&H Green Stamps, the episode did exemplify a common response at the time to mass closures of trading stamp redemption centers.
In March 1969, Don L. Lee published a poem on Ebony magazine that finished with the sentence "Jesus saves, Jesus saves, Jesus saves — S&H Green Stamps."[8]
The 1965 Canadian play Les Belles-soeurs is about a group of women who get together one evening to help organize the trading stamp collection (the fictitious Gold Star Stamps of Quebec) of a friend, Germaine. As time passes, Germaine realizes that the women are, in fact, jealous of her windfall, and are stealing the stamps instead of pasting them into the booklets.
In 1964, comedian Allan Sherman released the album "Allan in Wonderland" that contained a parody of the song "Green Eyes" called "Green Stamps".
In the 1962 hit "Speedy Gonzales" by Pat Boone, the final words of the song, in the Speedy Gonzales voice, say, "Hey Rosita, come queeck, down at the cantina they're giving green stamps with tequila!"[9]
In the 1961 first episode of Mister Ed, Ed the talking horse instructs his new owner Wilbur to get him some oats at the feed store, reminding him that "they give green stamps" to loud laughter by the laugh track.
In an episode of Get Smart titled "The Day They Raided The Knights", air date 01/11/1969. CONTROL is experiencing budget cuts and must temporarily lay off Agent 99, Barbara Feldon, who finds a job with the Knights Stamp Redemption Center similar in layout and operation to a Green Stamps Store.
The Genesis song "Dancing With The Moonlit Knight" contains the line, "Knights of the Green Shield stamp and shout!"
The poem by Nikki Giovanni "Our Detroit Conference (For Don L. Lee)" references "trading green stamps for brownie points".
In the 1982 movie, Grease 2, Michelle Pfeiffer as Stephanie Zinone is attending cars at a gas station, a mystery motorcycle driver shows up, in background a lady is shouting for her green stamps.
In the early 1960s, "chain" (actually pyramid) letters were common, and offering a bonanza in S&H Green Stamps was one of the schemes that would surface from time to time. The basic idea for any such scheme was simple: A victim received a letter with 5 names on it. The victim was then supposed to send the person on the top of the list, or send each person on the list, a book of S&H Green Stamps. The victim then removed the top name, wrote his or her name and address on the bottom, and sent the list to five friends, who (unbeknownst to the original victim) also became victims. The mathematics were seemingly simple--if each recipient played along, then an individual could receive 3125, or 3905, books in return. This was the first introduction of the baby boomers to the sort of pyramid scheme swindle that unscrupulous people could set up if the victims did not understand the limits to growth of such schemes posed by the finite population of possible payors.
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