S&H Green Stamps (also called Green Shield Stamps) were a form of trading stamps popular in the United States between the 1930s and late 1980s. They formed a rewards program operated by the Sperry and Hutchinson company (S&H), founded in 1896 by Thomas Sperry and Shelly Hutchinson. During the 1960s, the rewards catalog printed by the company was the largest publication in the United States and the company issued three times as many stamps as the U.S. Postal Service. Customers would receive stamps at the checkout counter of supermarkets, department stores, and gas stations among other retailers, which could be redeemed for products in the catalog.
Sperry & Hutchinson began offering stamps to U.S. retailers in 1896. The retail organizations that distributed the stamps (primarily supermarkets, filling stations, and shops) bought the stamps from S&H and gave them as bonuses to shoppers based on the dollar amount of a purchase. The stamps—issued in denominations of one, ten, and fifty "points"—were perforated with a gummed reverse, and as shoppers accumulated the stamps they moistened the reverse and mounted them in collectors books, which were provided free by S&H. Shoppers could then exchange filled books for premiums, including housewares and other items, from the local Green Stamps store or catalog. Each premium was assigned a value expressed in the number of filled stamp books required to obtain that item.
The company also traded overseas. In the early 1960s, it launched S&H Pink Stamps in the United Kingdom, having been beaten to their green shield trademark in 1958 by Richard Tompkins' Green Shield Trading Stamp Company.
