This was one of the most interesting things that has disappeared in the face of retail. S&H Green Stamps. Course there were others, but the idea was similar today to a loyalty card, but given by most merchants with the idea of repeat business. As a kid, my Mom, who had collected the stamps, would assign me to take them, and lick them and put them in a book.
You would get stamps for a monetary amount in a transaction, and besides your change, you would get this long roll of stamps. Now in a few years time, folks reading this might not even know what a stamp is, but hopefully you understand. You know, a little square of paper, with perforated edges for tearing, and glue on the back. The front had S&H printed on, and well, you would =collect them, fill the book, and then when you had enough books, you could take a trip to France or acquire a bicycle or go shopping in one of their retail stores.
All the prices for the goods were listed in books, which represented thousands of hand licked stamps, collected methodically over months and years from every conceivable transaction. You could find gas stations that gave them, groceries, dry good, and department stores, and so forth.
Seems like, as a kid, we would dream of all these things we were going to get, so we got Mom to shop where we could get the most stamps. After a while, when you had a hundred books filled and you could realize that it would take 25,000 more to get a bicycle, you would begin to lose sight of the goal.
But never mind, it was a big deal. Seems like they just went away, and that was it. Not sure what happened to all those uncollected or unredeemed books, but, there are probably people out there somewhere hoping to still redeem their Gold Bond or S&H Green stamps.
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