this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2024
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Top Value Stamps - Trading stamps - 1950 (i.imgur.com)
submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/vintage
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.cafe/post/6017593

More to read on:
https://northeastnews.net/pages/remember-this-trading-stamps/

" Commonly called “trading stamps,” merchants across America offered savings stamps based on the amount of the customer’s purchase. The more one purchased, the more stamps were obtained for the cash transaction.

Stamps were pasted into savings books and when full, could be redeemed at a redemption center chock-full of name brand items, from household goods to appliances, home decor and toys. Depending on the merchant, the stamps offered could be Gold Bond, S&H Green Stamps, or Top Value, among others. "

I think, it work like royalty promotion, isn't it ? Can someone enlightening me on this stuff.

Perhaps it is not like food/fuel/clothes stamps in the Soviet ?!

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

The concept of independent stamp companies sounds absolutely insane nowadays, but here's how it worked.

I start a stamp company, let's say, BlueStamp. I call some major retailers and sell them rolls of my BlueStamp, that's where I make money.

See, people will want BlueStamps, because I've got amazing products they can get for free (the retailer paid for them by buying stamps). The retailers want to buy my stamps, because people will want them, which will make them shop at their store.

I just have to smart about it. I'll only sell my BlueStamps to BobMart and not AndyShop, because I don't want then they don't get to benefit as much. After all, If you can get BlueStamps everywhere, why would Bob or Andy even get them? I offer to supermarkt chain A, and not B, I offer it to Appliance store C, but not D. A BlueStamo saver will prefer a BlueStamp store over a Green stamp store, after all.

I might even give some big comapanies a discount on my stamps, because a bigger network offers more value, and I'll sell more stamps to these companies. Getting, say, Walmart in my system will make me very popular, and then I can charge every corner store at full price.

And that system worked really well, untill it got popular. There were literally hundreds of these systems, which make it all fall apart pretty quickly, and everyone just started offering their own savings programs.

[–] jqubed 2 points 4 months ago

I don’t know if they still do it, but as recently as the ’00s Lowe’s Foods in North Carolina was offering S&H Green Points, no longer physical stamps but an electronic program tied to your phone number. I don’t think my parents ever really used it for much. I think now they give a discount on gasoline purchased at the stations many stores have in the parking lots.

It was only years later that I learned they used to be S&H Green Stamps, but I never understood how the program worked.

[–] Blue_Morpho 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

We had green stamps. It's a paper version of cash back / promotions on your credit card.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Can it use interchangeable between vendor, or it is lock-in one vendor, one supermarket ?

[–] Blue_Morpho 4 points 4 months ago

Many different places from grocery stores to gas stations gave green stamps. The stamps themselves were exchanged for cash/stuff by mailing them back the Green Stamp company.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (2 children)

It was locked in. You couldn't use 'green stamps' at a Top Value redemption center, any more than you can use a McDonald's gift certificate at Starbucks.

There were a lot more independent supermarkets back in the day. They might or might not give out stamps.

Another, similar redemption trick was with cigarettes. You'd get one 'ticket' per pack, and extras if you got a whole carton. Marlboro was doing this well into the 1990s.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I can remember looking through a catalogue of items you could buy with tickets from cigarettes as a kid in the 1990s. It was in the UK, can't remember the brand but I think it might have been Benson and Hedges.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Always loved cigarette branding. Marlboro went from a woman's cigarette to a manly man's smoke without missing a beat.

In the USA, Benson and Hedges played off being a 'sophisticated' product that wouldn't stoop to cheap give-aways.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

IIRC Benson & Hedges were the same here.

I might have remembered the brand wrong, I was very young.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Funnily enough there's gift cards you can use at multiple different shops now a days. Even if isn't explicitly said, I remember using subway gift cards at league of legends. They used the same company for them so it was interchangeable.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Funnily enough there’s gift cards you can use at multiple different shops now a days.

So, they've reinvented cash.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

That's what it was always about. It's deffered cash. They get your money and you may or may not claim it in the future and you might even spend extra just to make sure the card has a 0 balance.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

Here's my standard gift suggestion.

Get a drawstring purse [the kind Conan or Robin Hood would carry] Fill it with gold colored coins. In the US and Canada there are gold dollar [$2.00 in the Great White North]

Throw that thing down on the bar and say 'A flagon of mead for my men!'