 trading stamps are small paper coupons given to customers by merchants in loyalty marketing programs that predate the modern loyalty card. like the similarly-issued retailer coupons, these stamps only had a minimal cash value of a few mils (hundredths of a cent) individually, but when a customer accumulated a number of them, they could be exchanged with the trading stamp company (usually a third-party issuer of the stamps) for premiums, such as toys, personal items, housewares, furniture and appliances. thumb|350px|right|gold bond trading stamps were dispensed in strips at the time of purchase and pasted into books for saving. ==history== the practice started in the 1890s, at first given only to customers who paid for purchases in cash, to reward those who did not purchase on credit. l. h. parke, a philadelphia and pittsburgh manufacturer and distributor of food products, including coffees, teas, spices, and canned goods, set up a trading stamp program in 1895 under the name parke's blue point trading stamps for customers who purchased parke's products in local retail grocery stores in pennsylvania and new jersey. the program was very successful. parke set up viewing rooms where retail customers could inspect and obtain various premium goods in their headquarters buildings in philadelphia and pittsburgh. it grew with the spread of chain gasoline stations in the early 1910s and the then-new industry of chain supermarkets in the 1920s, and merchants found it more profitable to award them to all customers. trading stamps were at their most popular from the 1930s through the 1960s. an example of the value of trading stamps would be during the 1970s and 1980s where the typical rate issued by a merchant was one stamp for each 10Â¢ of merchandise purchased. a typical book took approximately 1200 stamps to fill, or the equivalent of us $120.00 in purchases.  in the united states, the most popular brand of trading stamps was "s&h green stamps", sometimes informally simply known as "green stamps". other larger brands included "top value stamps", "gold bond stamps", "plaid stamps", "blue chip stamps", "buccaneer stamps", and "gold strike stamps". "texas gold stamps" were given away in their namesake state mainly by the h-e-b grocery store chain, and mahalo stamps in hawaii. merchants would pay a third-party trading stamp company for the stamps, and then would advertise that they gave away trading stamps with purchases. the 
Cinderella_stamps Customer_loyalty_programs