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What Happened to Green Stamps? I The Currency Every Mother in America Saved

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S&H Green Stamps were the currency of the American household. Your mother collected them at the grocery store, the gas station, the drugstore — anywhere that handed out those small green stamps at the register. She brought them home and sat at the kitchen table with her children, licking and sticking them into collector books, page after page, until there were enough to trade in for something real. She had the catalog memorized. She knew exactly what was on page 37. A toaster. A set of towels. A lamp. Things the family budget could not stretch to cover, earned one grocery trip at a time.
The Sperry & Hutchinson Company started it all in 1896 in Jackson, Michigan. By the 1960s it had become the largest purchaser of consumer goods in the world. More stamps were printed than postage stamps. Eighty percent of American households collected them. Gas stations gave double stamps on Tuesdays to win customers. The competition between stations was so fierce it became known as the gas station stamp wars. Blue Chip Stamps launched as a rival — Warren Buffett bought the company and used its float to build Berkshire Hathaway. The Brady Bunch featured Green Stamps in an episode. A zoo traded gorillas for stamps. A man in Oklahoma bought a King Midget car entirely with books of Green Stamps.
Redemption centers were events. Women brought stacks of filled books and walked out with blenders, rocking chairs, luggage. It felt like Christmas without the wrapping paper.
Then discount stores killed the model. Supermarkets discovered they could simply lower prices instead of offering stamps. The 1973 oil crisis was the final blow — gas stations dropped stamps overnight. S&H tried digital revivals, online points, partnerships. None of it worked. The company quietly ended operations in 2020. Every loyalty card, every airline mile, every points program traces its DNA back to those little green stamps. But none of them ever felt the same as sitting at that kitchen table with your mother, tongue green from licking, turning grocery runs into something that felt like magic.