Did your mother ever give you the job of pasting trading stamps into books? Mine did. My childhood is full of rainy afternoons spent licking (or wetting with a sponge after I got smart) drawers full of S&H Green stamps. That entitled me to browse the S&H Idea Book to see what we could spend our stamps on. It was almost as cool as looking through the JCPenney Christmas Catalogue⦠almost. My recent discovery of trading stamps in the Sophienburg Collection prompted a little more in depth look at trading stamps in New Braunfels.Â
Before there were frequent flyer miles, hole punched discount cards or computerized loyalty discounts, there were trading stamps. Trading stamps were developed as a retail loyalty program. Merchants would purchase the stamps in varying point denominations and give them out based on the amount of the purchase. Stamps were then pasted into savings books and redeemed for other merchandise. Sperry & Hutchinson created S&H Green Stamps in 1896. They were one