Trading stamps are small paper stamps given to customers by merchants in

loyalty Loyalty, in general use, is a devotion and faithfulness to a nation, cause, philosophy, country, group, or person. Philosophers disagree on what can be an object of loyalty, as some argue that loyalty is strictly interpersonal and only another ...

programs that predate the modern

loyalty card 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. Today, such programs cover most types of commerce, each having varying features and ...

. Like the similarly-issued retailer coupons, these stamps only had a minimal cash value of a few mils (thousandths of a dollar) individually, but when a customer accumulated a number of them, they could be exchanged with the trading stamp company (usually a third-party issuer of the stamps) for premiums, such as toys, personal items, housewares, furniture and appliances.

History

Origin

The practice of retailers issuing trading stamps started in 1891 at Schuster's Department Store,

Wisconsin Wisconsin () is a state in the upper Midwestern United States. Wisconsin is the 25th-largest state by total area and the 20th-most populous. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake M ...

. At first, the stamps were given only to customers who paid for purchases in

cash In economics, cash is money in the physical form of currency, such as banknotes and coins. In bookkeeping and financial accounting, cash is current assets comprising currency or currency equivalents that can be accessed immediately or near-im ...

as a reward for not making purchases on

credit Credit (from Latin verb ''credit'', meaning "one believes") is the trust which allows one party to provide money or resources to another party wherein the second party does not reimburse the first party immediately (thereby generating a debt) ...

. Other retailers soon copied the practice of giving trading stamps that could be redeemed at the issuer's store. One example was L. H. Parke Company a Philadelphia and Pittsburgh manufacturer and distributor of food products that included coffee, tea and spices along with canned goods. They established a trading stamp program in 1895 under the name Parke's Blue Point Trading Stamps for customers who purchased Parke's products in grocery stores in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The program was successful. Parke established showrooms in their headquarters buildings in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh where customers could inspect and obtain premium goods.

Independent trading stamp companies

In 1896 the Sperry and Hutchinson Company was created as an independent trading stamp company in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

. By 1957 there were approximately 200 trading stamp companies in operation. Typically, merchants would pay a third-party trading stamp company for the stamps, and would then advertise that they give trading stamps with purchases. Large retailers were usually given a discount on the stamps while smaller retailers generally had to pay the full cost of adopting the trading stamp program. The intent was to get customers to be loyal to the merchant, so that they would continue shopping there to obtain enough stamps to redeem for merchandise. Customers would fill books with stamps, and take the books to a trading stamp company redemption center to exchange them for premiums. Books could also be sent to the trading stamp company in exchange for premium merchandise via

mail order Mail order is the buying of goods or services by mail delivery. The buyer places an order for the desired products with the merchant through some remote methods such as: * Sending an order form in the mail * Placing a telephone call * Placing ...

catalogs. An example of the value of trading stamps would be during the 1970s and 1980s where the typical rate issued by a merchant was one stamp for each 10¢ of merchandise purchased. A typical book took approximately 1200 stamps to fill, or the equivalent of US $120.00 in purchases. While one of the most popular brand of trading stamps in the US were

S&H Green Stamps 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 a ...

, informally known as "green stamps", other large brands included Top Value Stamps,

Gold Bond Stamps Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile me ...

, Plaid Stamps,

Blue Chip Stamps Blue Chip Stamps started as a trading stamps company called "Blue Chip Stamp Company." They were a competitor of S&H Green Stamps. Blue Chip stamps were a loyalty program for customers, similar to discount cards issued by pharmacies and groce ...

, Quality Stamps,

Buccaneer Stamps Buccaneers were a kind of privateers or free sailors particular to the Caribbean Sea during the 17th and 18th centuries. First established on northern Hispaniola as early as 1625, their heyday was from the Restoration in 1660 until about 1688, ...

and Gold Strike Stamps.

Texas Gold Stamps Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...

were given in Texas mainly by the

H-E-B H-E-B Grocery Company, LP, is an American privately held supermarket chain based in San Antonio, Texas, with more than 340 stores throughout the U.S. state of Texas, as well as in northeast Mexico. The company also operates Central Market, an ...

grocery store chain, and Mahalo stamps in Hawaii.

Growth and decline

The use of trading stamps grew with the spread of chain

gasoline station A filling station, also known as a gas station () or petrol station (), is a facility that sells fuel and engine lubricants for motor vehicles. The most common fuels sold in the 2010s were gasoline (or petrol) and diesel fuel. Gasoline ...

s in the early 1910s and the then-new industry of chain

supermarket A supermarket is a self-service shop offering a wide variety of food, beverages and household products, organized into sections. This kind of store is larger and has a wider selection than earlier grocery stores, but is smaller and more limit ...

s in the 1920s. Merchants found it more profitable to award them to all customers rather than cash only customers. Legal challenges regarding the use of trading stamps were raised in various jurisdictions around the US but were often struck down. Some merchant groups disliked trading stamps and actively worked to have them banned in their areas. Following WWII the use of trading stamps expanded when supermarkets began issuing them. By 1957 it was estimated that nearly 250,000 retail outlets were issuing trading stamps, with nearly two thirds of US households saving trading stamps. During this time trading stamp companies had between 1,400 - 1,600 retail centers where consumers could redeem their stamps for

consumer goods A final good or consumer good is a final product ready for sale that is used by the consumer to satisfy current wants or needs, unlike a intermediate good, which is used to produce other goods. A microwave oven or a bicycle is a final good, b ...

. In the early 1960s, the S&H Green Stamps company boasted that it printed more stamps annually than the number of

postage stamp A postage stamp is a small piece of paper issued by a post office, postal administration, or other authorized vendors to customers who pay postage (the cost involved in moving, insuring, or registering mail), who then affix the stamp to the f ...

s printed by the US government. In 1968 it was reported that more than $900 million in stamps were sold in the United States. Beginning in the early 1970s the use of trading stamps began to decline. Gasoline service stations stopped offering them due to the

energy crisis An energy crisis or energy shortage is any significant bottleneck in the supply of energy resources to an economy. In literature, it often refers to one of the energy sources used at a certain time and place, in particular, those that supply n ...

that occurred and many supermarkets started spending more money to advertise lower prices rather than issue stamps. During the 1980s there was a brief resurgence in the popularity of trading stamps, but overall their use continued to decline. Their role has been replaced by

coupon In marketing, a coupon is a ticket or document that can be redeemed for a financial discount or rebate when purchasing a product. Customarily, coupons are issued by manufacturers of consumer packaged goods or by retailers, to be used in r ...

s, rewards programs offered by

credit card A credit card is a payment card issued to users (cardholders) to enable the cardholder to pay a merchant for goods and services based on the cardholder's accrued debt (i.e., promise to the card issuer to pay them for the amounts plus the ...

companies and other

loyalty program 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. Today, such programs cover most types of commerce, each having varying features and ...

s such as grocery "Preferred Customer" cards. Through the 1990s and early 2000s the majority of the remaining trading stamp companies either ceased operations or converted to an online format. In 2008 the last operating trading stamp company in the United States, Eagle Stamps, closed.

International trading stamps

Canada

The use of trading stamps began in Canada circa 1900 but their use was banned by the Canadian government in 1905. In 1959 the grocery chain Loblaws introduced their Lucky Green Stamps program and a trading stamp program was started by an IGA grocery store in Winnipeg. Although faced with legal challenges the use of trading stamps in these instances was upheld as legal since they did not meet the definition of trading stamps in the Canadian Criminal Code. The

Criminal Code A criminal code (or penal code) is a document that compiles all, or a significant amount of a particular jurisdiction's criminal law. Typically a criminal code will contain offences that are recognised in the jurisdiction, penalties that might ...

provisions against trading stamps were deleted, among other obsolete provisions, b
Bill C-51
in 2018 during the

42nd Canadian Parliament The 42nd Canadian Parliament was in session from December 3, 2015, to September 11, 2019, with the membership of its lower chamber, the House of Commons of Canada, having been determined by the results of the 2015 federal election held on Octobe ...

United Kingdom

By the 1960s the use of trading stamps had spread to the United Kingdom. Entrepreneur Richard Tompkins established Green Shield Stamps in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and ...

. Although based along a similar model, the Green Shield Stamps were independent of S&H Green Stamps but carried a similar trademark. Tompkins' company began selling stamps to

filling station A filling station, also known as a gas station () or petrol station (), is a facility that sells fuel and engine lubricants for motor vehicles. The most common fuels sold in the 2010s were gasoline (or petrol) and diesel fuel. Ga ...

s, small retailers and had signed up the

Tesco Tesco plc () is a British Multinational corporation, multinational groceries and general merchandise retailer headquartered in Welwyn Garden City, England. In 2011 it was the third-largest retailer in the world measured by gross revenues an ...

supermarket chain to the Green Shield Stamp franchise in 1963. The S&H Company began offering their stamps in the United Kingdom as well but with the color changed to pink. 1965, the

British co-operative movement The United Kingdom is home to a widespread and diverse co-operative movement, with over 7000 registered co-operatives owned by 17 million individual members and which contribute £34bn a year to the British economy. Modern co-operation started wi ...

was offering trading stamps as a new means of allocating patronage

dividend A dividend is a distribution of profits by a corporation to its shareholders. When a corporation earns a profit or surplus, it is able to pay a portion of the profit as a dividend to shareholders. Any amount not distributed is taken to be re-i ...

s to its consumer members.

Hong Kong

References and sources

;References ;Sources * * {{Customer loyalty programs Customer loyalty programs Cinderella stamps