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, 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 accepted savings books for those who had unredeemed Top Value books, before S&H itself ceased business.
S&H Green Stamps had several competitors including Greenbax Stamps offered by Piggly Wiggly, Gold Bell Gift Stamps, Triple S Stamps, Gold Bond Stamps, Blue Chip Stamps, Plaid Stamps, Top Value Stamps, King Korn Stamps, Quality Stamps, Gunn Brothers given by Safeway, Buccaneer, and Eagle Stamps.
History
Beginnings
Sperry & Hutchinson began offering stamps to U.S. retailers in 1896. The retail organizations that distributed the stamps were primarily supermarkets, gasoline filling stations, and stores. They bought the stamps from S&H and gave them as bonuses to shoppers based on the dollar amount of a purchase. A 1963 magazine article stated that the average supermarket paid $2.45 for the stamps needed to fill one collector book.The stamps were issued in denominations of one, ten, and fifty points, perforated with a gummed reverse. As shoppers accumulated the stamps, they moistened the reverse and mounted them in collector's books, which were provided free by S&H. The books contained 24 pages and filling a page required 50 points, so each book contained 1,200 points. Shoppers could exchange filled books for premiums, including housewares and other items, from the local Green Stamps store or catalog. Each premium was assigned a value expressed by the number of filled stamp books required to obtain it.
Classification
Green Stamps were one of the early retail loyalty programs, by which retailers purchased the stamps from the operating company and then gave them away at a rate determined by the merchant. Some shoppers chose one merchant over another because they gave out more stamps per dollar spent.International
The company also traded overseas. During the early 1960s, it initiated S&H Pink Stamps in the United Kingdom, having been beaten to their green shield trademark during 1958 by Richard Tompkins's Green Shield Trading Stamp Company.Decline
Legal issues
In 1972, the company was brought before the United States Supreme Court for violating the unfairness doctrine. In FTC v. Sperry & Hutchinson Trading Stamp Co., the court held that restricting the trade of the stamps was illegal. Sperry and Hutchinson was sold by the founders' successors in 1981 to Baldwin United. In 1999, it was purchased from Leucadia National, a holding firm, by a member of the founding Sperry family. At that time, only about 100 U.S. stores were offering Green Stamps.Online factors
Eventually, with the rise of the Internet and the World Wide Web, the company modified its practices, and offered "greenpoints" as rewards for online purchases. The Greenpoints could be earned and redeemed at only a few stores, such as Foodtown in New York state and New Jersey.The S&H Greenpoints program was discontinued as of October 4, 2020, and it was announced that all legacy S&H Green Stamps no longer had value and could no longer be redeemed, while S&H Greenpoints totals would be transferred to a new program called Freshpoints.