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.
A loyalty program is a marketing strategy designed to encourage customers to continue to shop at or use the services of a business associated with the program. A loyalty program typically involves the operator of a particular program set up an account for a customer of a business associated with the scheme, and then issue to the customer a loyalty card which may be a plastic or paper card, visually similar to a credit card, that identifies the cardholder as a participant in the program. Cards may have a barcode or magstripe to more easily allow for scanning, although some are chip cards or proximity cards.
Various loyalty cards
