Community Chat

[jeanlake]

I licked quite a few S & H green stamps into those booklets. Parents would discuss, ad nauseum, what their next purchase would be. We'd look forward to riding in the car to the redemption store. Sounds like a church, eh? Woe to the kid on Oakland street who knocked over a lamp bought by green stamps. 

Deferred gratification. My parents lived it.     

[x Hedge]

s&h green stamps were a consumer rewards program, and had nothing to do with rationing.

[ceekay]

S&H Greenstamps had a catalog.  We used to look through it when my mom had enough books of stamps to get something.  I remember going to a store to pick up our items and walking around looking at the merchandise. Would have been the mid 1960s.  Blast from the past!

[Kachina624]

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@sweetee2 wrote:

If you want to really go back it would be S&H green stamps. I remember when my mother would collect them. I don't remember how or what they were used for maybe someone here could enlighten us.

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@sweetee2   I spent the first couple of weeks of my maternity leave in 1969, pasting a ton of those stamps in books, then I went and traded them for baby things.

[chickenbutt]

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@sweetee2 wrote:

If you want to really go back it would be S&H green stamps. I remember when my mother would collect them. I don't remember how or what they were used for maybe someone here could enlighten us.

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I totally remember theS&H Green Stamps and the Bluechip Stamps.  Ugh - having to lick them and paste them in the book for her.  My tongue just got dry thinking about it. 

There were these stores where you could exchange them for goods like kitchen stuff, household stuff, etc (that's all I remember).

I grew up in N CA and she would haul all of us to Santa Rosa to the stores so she could buy stuff with her books of stamps.

[millieshops]

@Anonymous032819I remember playing with those ration books after the war ended.  Really don't remember just which stamps my family had not used, probably because I hadn't learned to read much by then, but I know we still had some just as we still had the blackout window shades.

I'm hoping that many of the hoarders will soon run out of storage space.  It's already beyond interesting, beyond my patience to think maybe they are just trying to assure themselves they'll be okay.  And I'm not the only one -  I talked with a friend today who described gun sales going on in her area right out on the open street.  I'm not beyond thinking that someone is going to be killed over a pack of TP one day soon.

[SilleeMee]

Today I think that sort of thing would be more like the Food Stamp program, only modified to accommodate everyone. 

[Pearlee]

The S&H Green stamps translate into "points earned on purchases" in today's world, to be redeemed usually towards other products or cash.

@Anonymous032819. IMO there is enough to be concerned about presently than to start fretting about things that could -- or could not -- happen in the future.

[Carmie]

My parents had some of those rationing hooks.  I remember asking what they were for.  Hopefully, we won't need them again.

S&H green stamps are pretty recent. They went out business in the late 80's.  My kids used to paste them in the books for me.  I still use some small kitchen appliances that I got with them.

[GrailSeeker]

I still remember the livingroom table lamps my mom got with S&H green stamps.  They are in a picture I have from when I was about 5. 

Another grocery store gave Gold Bond stamps.  I think I got a playpen that I never used, except for a puppy, for my first son in 1977. 

Plaid Stamps were from another grocery store yet, maybe A&P. I know I got a Bonnie The Plaid Lassie doll in a Christmas exchange from my uncle who managed an A&P.  Wish I still had her.  She was a nice doll.