S&H Green Stamps

Founded in 1896 by Thomas Sperry and Shelley Byron Hutchinson, S&H Green Stamps became the leading customer loyalty program in the United States, which reached its zenith during the consumer-driven 1960s, when the company issued more stamps per year than the U.S. Postal Service.

A Bygone Era

Purchased by merchants such as department stores, gas stations and grocery stores, retailers handed out Green Stamps to customers at a rate determined by the merchant, based on a customer’s total dollar purchase. Issued in denominations of one, ten and fifty points, shoppers licked and stamped them onto 24-page collector books issued for free by S&H, each page holding a total of 50 points, while a completed collector book contained 1,200 Green Stamp points.

Runaway Consumerism

Once a shopper had amassed enough Green Stamps, they could either shop the free S&H Idea Book—as many as 35 million books distributed each year during the 1960s—or visit a local Green Stamp store to shop for dish ware, home appliances, toys and sporting goods, jewelry and more. A 1963 magazine article wrote that the average retailer paid $2.45—some $23.00 in today’s currency—for enough stamps to fill a collector book, while many shoppers consciously choose one retailer over another based on how many stamps a merchant gave out for each dollar spent.

Competitors Everywhere

Over the years, as S&H Green Stamps reached their market high, competitive loyalty programs tried to penetrate the S&H monopoly, including Greenbax Stamps, Gold Bond Stamps and Blue Chip Stamps, yet none could compete with Green Stamps’ entrenched dominance in the U.S. market. By 1972, however, S&H Green Stamps began its precipitous decline, thanks in part to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling proclaiming that S&H Green Stamps Co violated the unfairness doctrine of the Federal Trade Commission by restricting the trade of Green Stamps to a select group of retailers, leading to a steady decline in business until the company’s 1981 sale to Baldwin United, followed by its 1999 purchase by Leucadia National, which was a holding company established by a member of the Sperry family.

Final Years

After the explosive rise of Internet e-commerce, Leucadia National announced that S&H Green Stamps no longer held value and could no longer be redeemed, while the company’s corporate shell was purchased in 2013 by Bubba Gump Shrimp Company founder, Anthony Zolezzi, who plans to relaunch the company using a new business model, making S&H Green Stamps, a bygone memory for senior Americans everywhere.