S&H Green Stamps was a line of trading stamps popular in the United States from 1896 until the late 1980s. They were distributed as part of a rewards program operated by the Sperry & Hutchinson company (S&H), founded in 1896 by Thomas Sperry and Shelley Byron Hutchinson. During the 1960s, the company issued more stamps than the U.S. Postal Service, and distributed 35 million catalogs a year. Customers received stamps at the checkout counters of supermarkets, department stores, and gasoline stations among other retailers, which could then be redeemed for products from the catalog. Top Value Stamps ceased operations in the early 1980s, after which S&H would accept savings books for those left with unredeemed Top Value books, before S&H itself also ceased business.
S&H Green Stamps.
Booklet covers
S&H Green Stamps sign preserved on a grocery store building in Goleta, California.
A repurposed S&H Green Stamps sign in 1973. (See 1973 oil crisis.)
Trading stamps are small paper stamps given to customers by merchants in loyalty programs that predate the modern loyalty card. Like the similarly-issued retailer coupons, these stamps only had a minimal cash value of a few mils individually, but when a customer accumulated a number of them, they could be exchanged with the trading stamp company for premiums, such as toys, personal items, housewares, furniture and appliances.
Gold Bond trading stamps were dispensed in strips at the time of purchase and pasted into books for saving.
Plaid Stamps sign at Cracker Barrel restaurant in Lubbock, Texas
A British trading stamp collecting book from the mid twentieth century.
