Licking and gluing S&H Green Stamps

I came across some books of S&H Green Stamps recently while combing through a box lot from an auction. They were inside an old Eckerd’s drugstore paper bag, the word “Stamps” neatly written across the bottom.

The five books were likely put away years ago by a mother who had planned to redeem them for merchandise from a catalog or redemption store. They were filled with pages of 50 single stamps and five 10’s.

The book instantly brought back memories of licking and gluing, licking and gluing, licking and gluing. I don’t remember what my family bought with the stamps, but I do remember that part of it. My auction buddy Janet recalled redeeming books for a metal music stand when she was about 12 or 13. She was taking guitar lessons at the time, and redeemed the stamps at a store.

S&H Green Stamps are relics of our Baby-Boomer past, we were children of the 1950s and 1960s when the Sperry & Hutchinson Company had more stamps in circulation than the Post Office. Families got them at grocery stores when they bought food and gas stations when they pumped gas.

Licking and gluing the stamps is literally stamped in our collective memory. Seeing them after all those years is like meeting up with an old friend.

That certainly seemed to be the case at a flea market I attended last weekend, as Baby Boomers reacted with glee when they saw them on a table. “I’m going to die of something from licking all those stamps,” one women said jokingly.

The ink on the stamps would turn some tongues green; a 2000 New York Times story said the glue was tapioca-flavored. I just remember that it was awful-tasting.

Another woman couldn’t recall what her mother had bought with them. (Do you? Maybe the glue did have an effect.) She asked her husband if he licked them. He didn’t, but his grandmother had them all over the house, he said.

I was starting to think that only the girls in the family licked stamps until a man dropped by the table, recognized the books and produced a memory. He licked them for his mother.

Back then, you got 10 stamps for each dollar you spent, and 1,200 stamps filled a book. The books were redeemed for cash or merchandise – from clocks to lamps to sporting goods – at a redemption store or from the S&H catalog. Stores bought them from Sperry & Hutchinson, distributed them “free,” and were paid in loyal returning shoppers. The S&H company was founded in 1896 and the stamps peaked from the 1930s to 1980s.

It seemed that every child of a certain generation was marked by the S&H stamp:

Poet Haki Madhubuti (he was Don L. Lee when I was a college student and in love with his revolutionary poetry) ended his 1969 poem “In the Interest of Black Salvation” with the words “Jesus saves, Jesus saves, Jesus saves — S&H Green Stamps.”

Andy Warhol painted single stamps on canvas in 1962 and titled it simply “S&H Green Stamps.”

Stephen King, in his 2001 book “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft,” got the idea for a short story after seeing his mother’s “S&H green” tongue. The idea was a story about a family that made counterfeit Happy Stamps in their basement to buy a house.

Are they worth anything now, I wondered. So, I Googled and found out that S&H Green Stamps have not disappeared, they’ve just changed their name. They’re now called S&H Greenpoints, have a website and are certainly redeemable. You can trade them in for cash, merchandise and greenpoints (stamps are converted one for one) that can be used to buy from the rewards catalog, according to the website. The rewards range from appliances to toys to travel packages to gift certificates.

I couldn’t find the cash-redemption value for the stamps, but one site said that 100 stamps equals $1. So, my old books of 1,200 stamps are worth $12 each.

In greenpoints, I can get a Blockbuster movie card or a luggage tag that offers five messages I can choose from. I like these three, because someone always takes my best tags: “If you are not my owner, keep your hands off!” “If you are reading this, you are too close to my bag.” “No, one pair of shoes won’t do.”