Stamps and Other Saving Devices

STAMPS AND OTHER SAVING DEVICES


I was doing the washing this morning, not as if I was down by the river with a scrub board mind you, rather in the basement waiting for the load to finish. Since we always break our cardboard boxes down, I took a few moments to break down the Coke boxes. I have noticed when I pull the end off the fridge pack there is an official coke re-wards code on the end of the box.
I brought the ends with the code numbers on them upstairs and thought I’d plug them into the website and see just what this was all about. Seven numbers later, I have 70 points--I just need 430 more for a T-shirt!


That reminded me of something. Did your household collect trading stamps? It seems to me that the Red Owl store in Thief River Falls offered Gold Bond stamps and that Piggly Wiggly offered S. and H. Green stamps. I know the drug store I worked at offered S&H. There were probably gas stations that offered stamps with purchases, as well.


My mother bought a lot of groceries. She suffered from trading stamp syndrome. There was a drawer in the kitchen where she put the stamps when she put her groceries away. Somewhere along the line it became my responsibility to fill the books. I learned early that the glue was bad tasting, and although the stamps got pretty wet I used a wash cloth!


As I was breaking the boxes down I remembered reading somewhere about how the stamps started before 1900. The idea was, if you pay cash for your merchandise you were rewarded with stamps, which of course, one could save up for special items. Probably much like the Coke rewards program, one needs a lot of stamps.


Mother took over the responsibility of filling her own books when I left in 1962. The catalog from the Gold Bond Company had many nice items to choose from. Mother bought a complete set of Le Creuset pots and pans with her stamps. It isn’t fair to compare the prices of the day with the prices of the early 60s, yet to get a feel for the Dutch oven for example, it now sells for over $200. Mother had every piece that Gold Bond Company offered and she still had them when she died. She had made a good investment. She had even heat of cast-iron and because the pans were enamel, they didn’t have to be seasoned. The big frying pan was used to fry chicken; and the Dutch oven was used for roast beef.


I lived with my parents before and after Rachel was born. During that time, once again, I pasted stamps for her.


Does anybody remember the plot of a well known episode of The Brady Bunch which revolved around the children bickering over what to do with all of the trading stamps they had collected (many of which Alice had saved up) since the trading stamp company was going out of business and all the stamps needed to be redeemed that day. The boys wanted to trade them in for a row boat, and the girls wanted a sewing machine. A contest was held between the boys and the girls involving building a house of cards, which the girls won. After going to the store to trade in for their sewing machine, the girls returned home with a new color television, much to the delight of the boys! Alice must have really saved up a lot and Sam the butcher must’ve been giving her some extra stamps on the side!


What are the rewards of the day,now? What’s the gimmick? Is it credit cards that rounded up to the next dollar? Is it grocery stores and drugstores that you have a preferred customer card where, with the card you get some savings? Or is it reward cards where if you spend X. amount of dollars, redeemable specified savings on the items they choose whether you need them or not. As an example: at Best Buy, we have a rewards card, I can buy a wireless router for $15 off. Tell me, just how many wireless routers do I need? At OfficeMax, they send out $10 off cards, one has to have the discipline to buy $50 worth to get $10 off, not $100 worth to get $10 off. They saw me coming didn’t they?


One’s wallet would be bulging with cards if you participated in every single store’s come on. At the hardware store, one can just give them your phone number, and they’ll look it up for you. The problem is, the reward card generally only lasts 30 days. Are we to discipline ourselves to go to the hardware store once a month to save a couple of dollars? My question to you is, how often you go to the hardware store?


At least, with stamps, such as Gold Bond and S&H, you paid your bill and the employee handed you the stamps, (one stamp for every $.10 worth of merchandise). If you bought $60 worth of groceries each week, you would have two books full of stamps in a month! No one asked you to show a card, ask for a phone number, or if you had a stamp book -- -- they just spun the rotary dial and handed you the stamps based on your total spent. If you didn’t collect stamps yourself, you could always take them and give them to the person behind you in line. Wasn’t that simple?

Tom and I had a discussion about the 'stamp era'. He said the stores had to buy the stamps, which were costly. He went on to say that is mother was often asked if she saved stamps. He said the clerks asked because the stamps cut into the profit of the store. I always thought when someone declined that the employee put them in a seperate place and took them home for their own books. I was little, what did I know?


There is a grocery store in Fargo that I went to on occasion. They had a card which allowed you to save a few pennies. This card along with several other stores at the same time, was made to fit on your key ring. You shaking your head yes? Do you have some of these on your key ring? Yes? I was annoyed that the checker would act like I was a bozo because I didn’t have my pennies off card on my key ring. And so it came to pass, that I don’t market there anymore nor do I go to the pharmacy that has a key ring coupon-savings-get in your way-thing.


Which brings me to coupon clipping. I tried clipping coupons for a year. I also did some mailing list where they sent you products. What I found was, the brands with the coupons were not the brands that our family liked. What put the kibosh on this? We got a box in the mail one summer day, my son opened the box and started eating the jerky. It was dog jerky. The ended my coupon clipping and free box getting era. If Bud wanted jerky he should be eating in the human kind. Be assured that if their are coupons for products I always buy, they are ripped out of the paper. I have, on occasion printed coupons from on line.

To close I would like to say in that in 1960 my grandparents for each getting $30 a month in Social Security. You can imagine how long it took for grandma to fill a book of green stamps from the Piggly Wiggly store. Kudos to my mother, who did not save green stamps gave those stamps grandma. Thanks mom, nice move.

What's your lick on this?

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