Suddenly it's yours ...

If you're a classic Genesis fan, you might know the lyric, 'Knights of the Green Shield stamp and shout!' from the title track of the album Selling England by the Pound. 

If not, and you're under 40, this image will probably mean absolutely nothing to you.

Green Shield Stamps were a kind of shoppers loyalty scheme that began in 1958. These days when you shop at certain stores you accrue points that go onto a store loyalty card (and the shop gets a LOT of info about you and your shopping habits in return). But, back in the day, your 'points' took the form of stamps that you stuck into a book. You could then redeem full books or even half books in exchange for goods via special shops or by way of a mail order catalogue. 

Green Shield Stamps were very popular and were adopted by most of the UK's major retailers. They soon became part of the everyday fabric of Britain.

    

However, as we entered the economic trough that was the 1970s, high rates of inflation made the value of the stamps crash and stores began to opt out of the scheme. Very soon the main suppliers of stamps  were petrol stations. Aimed at company drivers who didn't care about the cost of fuel, competing stations began to offer double, triple, quadruple and even greater multiples of stamps. 

That worked out very well for me and a couple of my mates. We had Summer and weekend jobs working at a petrol station - in those days we physically put the petrol in the customers' cars - and we were supposed to always ask, 'Do you want your Green Shield Stamps?' Some drivers said 'No'. So we pocketed them. Meanwhile, seeing as how this was Cornwall and many of our customers were from overseas and had no idea what they were, we got to pocket theirs too. As long as the number of stamps 'given out' tallied with the amount of fuel sold, we got away with it. The perfect crime. Unwittingly, those tourists bought me my first 12 string guitar, a cheap Winfield 10 watt amplifier and many other goodies. 

As sales slowed and even more retailers abandoned the scheme, Green Shield Stamp catalogue shops began to offer part stamp-redemption and part cash for the goods in their catalogue. The proportion of cash accepted was slowly increased until the goods could be purchased outright without the need for any stamps at all. With this groundwork laid, the catalogue stores, warehouses and vehicle fleet were re-branded as Argos in July 1973. 

Argos finally suspended sale of stamps in 1983 but, despite a short revival in 1987 involving 2,500 shops, they finally ceased issuing them in 1991.

   

This catalogue is from the late 1960s (click on images below to see them enlarged). 

And this one is from the 1980s. The range of gifts was pretty wide ...

But maybe not quite this wide ...