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TRADING STAMPS

Trading stamps originated in the 1890s, but it was the expansion of supermarkets and gas stations in the 1950s that led to their soaring popularity. A marketing gimmick, colored stamps were given out by many retail establishments. Patrons collected the stamps, pasted them in blank books, and redeemed the filled stamp booklets for a wide variety of prizes: the most popular redemptions were sheets and blankets, furniture, appliances, and sporting goods. Trading stamp companies such as Sperry and Hutchinson (S&H Green Stamps) sold their stamps to retailers who used them as inducements for customer purchases. A 1966 survey reported that 49.3 million American households—83 percent of the national total—saved stamps. By the mid 1960s there were over three hundred stamp companies nationwide employing seventeen thousand with a payroll of $68 million. The industry peaked in 1969 with sales of $825 million. For much of the decade trading stamps were part of the American landscape: parents gave them to babysitters, corporations presented them to employees as rewards, and families often gathered around the kitchen table to glue trading stamps into booklets. In the early 1970s trading stamps fell by the wayside. Gas stations had accounted for 25 percent of stamp sales. With the oil crisis gas stations were assured of customers, and they stopped offering stamps. In the midst of the recession many supermarkets, figuring that customers would prefer lower prices at the checkout rather than free gifts later, followed gas stations' example and pulled out of stamp programs. By 1975 stamp sales had fallen to $275 million, a twenty-year low.