DID YOU, or your Mom, SAVE GREEN STAMPS

CHERISHING OUR VALLEY            2013

 The trading stamp companies were around as early as the last decade of the 19th century, but really "took off" during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Both S&H Green Stamps and Blue Chip Stamps were widely given to secure customer loyalty by San Fernando Valley companies in the 1950s and '60s. The S & H redemption center in Van Nuys was a big time enterprise when Elvis Presley was becoming a mega star in rock and roll.

S & H and Blue Chip stamps - Gift to The Museum of the San Fernando Valley from Arlene Bernholtz May 2013.  (click on image to enlarge it.)

A VALLEY HORS d'OUVRE

DISCOVERING OUR VALLEY    2011

David Keesey shares a memory:
"I still remember going to the S and  H Green Stamp store roaming through the shelves looking for items that we could get with the amount of books we had saved. All that licking and the taste of those stamps. Going to the gas stations to receive them along with drinking glasses. What about getting the towels in your favorite soap boxes.

I still have the spindles for my 45 records which I continue to listen too. The drive-in movies at the Canyon Drive-In and later at Van Nuys Drive-In on Sepulveda Boulevard.

I couldn't wait to ask my grandma if she had any laundry to do as I loved to pull the clothes as they came through the wringer washer! Then put them on the clothesline to dry. Oh, those carefree days of yesteryear.

Who doesn't remember those flocked Christmas trees with the color wheel."