cross-posted from: https://lemmy.cafe/post/6017593
More to read on:
https://northeastnews.net/pages/remember-this-trading-stamps/" Commonly called “trading stamps,” merchants across America offered savings stamps based on the amount of the customer’s purchase. The more one purchased, the more stamps were obtained for the cash transaction.
Stamps were pasted into savings books and when full, could be redeemed at a redemption center chock-full of name brand items, from household goods to appliances, home decor and toys. Depending on the merchant, the stamps offered could be Gold Bond, S&H Green Stamps, or Top Value, among others. "
I think, it work like royalty promotion, isn't it ? Can someone enlightening me on this stuff.
Perhaps it is not like food/fuel/clothes stamps in the Soviet ?!
We had green stamps. It's a paper version of cash back / promotions on your credit card.
Can it use interchangeable between vendor, or it is lock-in one vendor, one supermarket ?
Many different places from grocery stores to gas stations gave green stamps. The stamps themselves were exchanged for cash/stuff by mailing them back the Green Stamp company.
It was locked in. You couldn't use 'green stamps' at a Top Value redemption center, any more than you can use a McDonald's gift certificate at Starbucks.
There were a lot more independent supermarkets back in the day. They might or might not give out stamps.
Another, similar redemption trick was with cigarettes. You'd get one 'ticket' per pack, and extras if you got a whole carton. Marlboro was doing this well into the 1990s.
I can remember looking through a catalogue of items you could buy with tickets from cigarettes as a kid in the 1990s. It was in the UK, can't remember the brand but I think it might have been Benson and Hedges.
Always loved cigarette branding. Marlboro went from a woman's cigarette to a manly man's smoke without missing a beat.
In the USA, Benson and Hedges played off being a 'sophisticated' product that wouldn't stoop to cheap give-aways.
IIRC Benson & Hedges were the same here.
I might have remembered the brand wrong, I was very young.
Funnily enough there's gift cards you can use at multiple different shops now a days. Even if isn't explicitly said, I remember using subway gift cards at league of legends. They used the same company for them so it was interchangeable.
So, they've reinvented cash.
That's what it was always about. It's deffered cash. They get your money and you may or may not claim it in the future and you might even spend extra just to make sure the card has a 0 balance.
Here's my standard gift suggestion.
Get a drawstring purse [the kind Conan or Robin Hood would carry] Fill it with gold colored coins. In the US and Canada there are gold dollar [$2.00 in the Great White North]
Throw that thing down on the bar and say 'A flagon of mead for my men!'