Yes! Our local Safeway is doing something similar. You get stickers added to your sticker book. What a PITA!

I really don't need another crock pot. Or more waiting in line.

I don't remember what I got with them, but I sure saved those 'Green Stamps', too. That was quite a few years, ago!

I have a beautiful card table, from the 50's. It doesn't get used much anymore, but it has travelled the world with my family and we have had many a meal on it, as well as used it for a sewing table, puzzle table, extra holiday seating .... the list could go on. Now days it lives in the garage and is often used as the cash-box table for yard sales. Those stamps sure came in handy when first married, they helped we newly-weds get a start.

I've got Safeway stamps also. I thought it was for Cuisinart but I can't find any information online. I need to get the book to paste them in.

My mom used to LOVE green S&H stamps!

As newlyweds we collected these at the grocery store and the gas station and I do remember a recliner and two sets of corelle dishes that we got with them. That was sort of fun. I hate all the mini-cards that stores are pushing in order to get the sale price on goods. Just how many can I carry in my wallet?

Oh I loved putting the green stamps in the books after mom went to the store for the "order". Every Friday after she got home from school, we would go to the grocery store. We got our green stamps and I put them in the books. It was so exciting.

I remember the prizes in laundry detergent boxes also. Glasses, dish towels, etc.

Mom had a collection of depression glass from detergent boxes. I remember when banks gave away dinnerware.

1.I don't get to Safeway very often and 2. they stick them to my receipt with all the other stuff they give you and by the time I remember them I have no idea where they might be.

S&H Green Stamps were trading stamps popular in the United States from the 1930s until the late 1980s.

I didn't know other kinds of stamps were still around. Don't have a Safeway in my area.

We--the kids--had to paste them in the books when I was little. A lot of stores had S&H Green Stamps, but the grocery store mostly had Blue Chip Stamps. There was actually a Blue Chip store where you could redeem them. My first guitar came from there. The points you get on your credit card are basically the same thing. :)

I still have some stainless Volrath pie pans from 1969. When we married together we had a ton of them. We bought two sleeping bags, a lantern, a cooler and a few other things for camping. Being newlyweds we thought we had struck gold!! Those were the god old days!!

I still have my folding sewing machine table I got with stamps. I had also gotten a pair of white horse bookends and a clock. I don't have those any more. I probably had gotten more things too. We had the S and H green stamps and the yellow stamps, maybe they were called TV stamps.

Sue

A few years ago I was able to convert the green stamps over to green points for Daddy. We didn't know at the time that they would be "lost" if not used within a certain time. We did get a couple of items before they were lost.

We had a Green Stamp store in town. My mom saved them from the grocery store and gas station. After we closed up the house when my parents died, I took the booklets with me to my dorm room in college. When I graduated, I used them to buy a set of Revereware pots and pans. I still use them to cook over 50 years later.

They weren't legal in Kansas, but I remember glassware in oatmeal, and socks in detergent. Those were the worst socks (anklets) in the world. By the time you got to school the socks were bunched up at the toe of your shoe.

I remember them. If Mom didn't have anything she wanted to get my brother and I took turns picking out something. I remember get my first watch and camera with them.

I worked in for a large grocery chain during the years that Blue Chip stamps (more common in my area than S&H) were offered.

What most customers at the time didn't realize was that the stamps (and the items one could get with them) weren't "free" because the stores paid the equivalent of redemption value to procure the stamps and that cost was built into the product prices charged to customers. We were instructed that after completing the cash transaction (no credit cards for groceries then), we were to ask "Would you like Blue Chip stamps?". The answer was no for a significant percentage of customers, especially younger ones, and those no answers saved the store a lot of money.

When their popularity waned and price wars between the bigger chains got more common, stamps were dropped and the resulting "savings" for the store was passed on to customers in the form of lower prices.

PS - premiums and other rebates given today to credit card holders are a little different and slightly more indirect. They're bundled into the credit card processing fee paid to Visa/Mastercharge. In the stamp days, the cost was paid directly by the retailer to the stamp company to physically obtain stamps in machine rolls and sheets. The stamps were worth the same as money (though in lower individual denominations), and at our stores were kept in the locked vault along with cash.

I remember both the S&H Green Stamps and the Blue Chip Stamps. Collected both. And somewhere in the garage in a box of stuff that hasn't been unpacked since two moves ago (which means "more than 25 years ago), there are some S&H Green Stamps books that are full but never did get traded in for anything.

My mother got me a Hamilton Beach hand-mixer with S&H Green Stamps in 1971. Still have the mixer (and the original box) but only one speed works, and the little motor just can't do much anymore. It has been a great little machine, and I just can't get rid of it. Crazy to have sentimental attachment to to a mixer!

My mother had those, but I never really got to know what she purchased with them.

I most definitely remember Green Stamps. I have a 3-way wall lamp in my living room that I got with them. It has been used constantly since whatever the date was. Maybe some other things that I don't remember now. And I also got a Trash Compactor that was my favorite-ever "helper." I left that in the house when I sold it 6 years after my husband passed away.

I think we are all aware that there is no "Free Lunch," any way you look at it. It was a whole lot easier to save Green Stamps than it was to save cash change from the grocery store.

I actually found 3 in an album the other day. Just like yours, Glenda, the tiny ones. :)

I haven't a clue what I bought with mine and I'm sure whatever it was, I don't have it anymore.

We had those in CA, also Blue Chip Stamps. I cannot remember what we got, but I do remember standing in like to redeem them.

I remember pasting them in the books for my mom in the 60's. I can't remember what she bought but I remember going to the store with her to redeem them.

You can get Cuisine Art products with the Safeway stamps. They have a display in my store but I haven't really looked at it closely and have not saved the few stamps I have gotten.

I remember the socks bunched in the toe of my shoe! But they came from the shoe store, not the detergent. :) My mother didn't approve of anything but pure cotton socks. :) When I was in Jr. Hi., I was finally allowed to wear nylon knee socks with elastic in the ribs that actually stayed up. Oh, joy!

SW is right, of course, about the store purchasing the stamps, and all, but the point of what they call "trading stamps" was an inducement to shop at that store. People saved them up and bought things they really wanted. There were premiums on all the baking products from General Mills/Betty Crocker. My mother got a large set of Oneida kitchen flatware that way. Yes, if there are no premiums, there's a bigger margin which they could give you as savings, but loyalty and rewards programs are still around many decades later because they work.

People shop at XYZ store because they get loyalty points that come as everything from money back to redeemable "gifts" (online nowadays) to coupons. I mentioned the credit card points from the shopper's point of view--get your points (=stamps) and get your prize (miles, cash back, or dvd player). From the store's point of view--or at least the chain's, what takes the place of stamps is the "discount" card where you let them track your purchasing habits in exchange for at the register discounts, and mailed rewards and coupons. It costs them some money, but gets you coming back to their store. Similarly, if you have a scrip program where you pre-buy your groceries to benefit your school or congregation, it's on the same basis: Loyalty. Grocery stores have absurdly low margins--1-3% markup--with lots of labor and overhead costs. The reason they "donate" 2% or so is that they get a chunk of your money ahead of time, have a little time to use all the scrip money interest free before they're redeemed, and they have you committed to spend that future money at their store, because you've already given it to them.

The thing about trading stamps is that they were fun! A lot of these point things are ephemeral, and they live in some computer in someone else's hands. You can feel, and lick, the trading stamps and delight in filling up your book.

Now there's Plenti. It's the same thing without the gummy paper to lick.

The loyalty card things work differently from stamps. Most importantly, the store mostly isn't paying money to a third party (there are a few exceptions). They hope that whatever they offer a discount for will get the customer to buy more, buy something they wouldn't have bought otherwise, or come in another time. Also, the card accounts give the stores mineable data on spending patterns.

When a customer walked away from the checkstand with stamps in hand, their connection to that store was over. The stuff obtained with stamps was extremely expensive compared to the alternative of buying the same goods at a real store with cash.

I'm not sure giving stamps was any competitive advantage in my area because almost all stores offered them. (I worked at Ralphs)

Yes, I wasn't saying that they worked the same. I was saying that they were similar in providing an incentive to shop. Back in the stamp days data mining was in its infancy. Agreed that when all stores have the stamps, rather than providing a loyalty incentive, they become an expense that you have to have to stay competitive.

Oh yes I got to put the stamps in the books. It was so much fun to be able to get something with the stamps. Mom loved her stamps.

Our N&D store used to give those out. I was enthralled with the machine that spit them out. It had punch buttons and a dial, and it was AMAZING lololol! We would paste them into the books, and I seem to remember there was a catalog? Then you could go to this store that had just a counter and get the item you wanted (as long as you had enough stamps!). I don't remember anything specific we got, but I seem to remember sewing boxes and maybe a sewing machine, TV trays, that sort of thing.

We also had gas stations that gave out fancy glasses with a gold edge. And tea that had little figurines in them.

Thanks for bringing back good memories!

Dances.

haha! I remember pasting these green stamps in books when I was a little kid. However, I have no idea what my parents got with them.

Sue, I also have a 3 way floor lamp that I got with the stamps. I don't know what all mother got with them. But I still have my lamp & a Scrabble game that is on a turn table.

I sure do remember those green stamps and filling book after book with them, but I don't remember what I got from them. I do remember getting dish towels in boxes of detergent. Loved those towels.

You can still buy Red Rose Tea here with the Wade figurines in them. I have started collecting them for Alyssa.

Sue

Mu mom use to collect the S&H green stamps. I remember helping her fill the books, but not sure what she got with them. I also vaguely remember getting wheat dishes from inside a soap box. My grandmother use to collect them. I think they gave them away at the gas station also, but I'm not sure.

I remember the green stamps, and the Blue Chip stamps. One of my jobs when I was a kid was pasting them in the book. I remember getting a metal bookcase with them when I got older.

Yes, S&H stamps were worth cash.

Years ago Chicago had a trio of brothers who were infamous burglars. Pops Panczko was one of the three -- famous for being arrested over 200 times. I can't remember if he ever did serious time, but he could break into any safe. One of his memorable statements to the press was, "I'm a teef! It's what I do."

Twenty years ago I knew a younger gal, Judy, through a service club. She was much younger than most of the group's members. One day the topic of Green Stamps came up, and some of us were reminiscing about them -- much as we are in this thread.

Judy was all ears. "So *that's* what it was all about," she said. She remembered sitting at a table with her siblings, required to paste green stamps into booklets. It was endless. There were hundreds, thousands of the booklets. It was, "Don't ask. Just DO it."

Judy's uncle was Pops Panczko.

While any logical person knew that Green Stamps or Blue Chip Stamps were not free, I grew up in the time when all major grocery stores in town gave out stamps of some kind. So we saved them and bought things we needed with them.

Mother would have me sit at the table, with the s & h stamps in a plastic bread bag, with a water soaked sponge on a saucer, to use to paste the stamps into "the" book.

"While any logical person knew that Green Stamps or Blue Chip Stamps were not free"

Maybe that was true for the people you knew, sheilajoyce, and also sue_va, but I can't tell you how many times, in response to my asking "Would you like Blue Chip Stamps", I was told something approximating "Oh yes, I love the free gifts".

My grocery career ended by the mid-1970s. I remember there was one chain in SoCal that advertised cheap prices because eliminating stamps allowed big price reductions. I think that was Lucky Stores, and I think that opened a lot of eyes as well as beginning the store price wars and the ultimate demise of stamps in that very competitive market. When they learned how it worked, most customers preferred the lower prices.

PS - chisue, love that story.

I got a decanter with two galloping horses frosted on it. I still have it. I also got a set of drinking glasses that looked like stained glass. I loved them, but I had a dish washer back then, and it ruined them.