By Staff
Before grocery stores and other merchants started giving money-off coupons, which are so popular these days, there was another little gimmick they had.
People like me can surely remember those red and yellow Top Value stamps given to you when you made a purchase.
You had to lick the stamps and put them in a book.
When you filled a book it could be taken to a redemption center and traded in for merchandise.
There were several other stamps and books like S&H (Sperry and Hutchinson), Green (Diamond) thrift and I think another was a red and black Plaid, which was from A&P stores, if I'm right.
When Peg and I were first married in 1963, we collected lots of things with our stamp books, which we went to the Benton Harbor redemption center to cash in.
Some things I remember getting were a baby scale, a baby high chair, a clock, a wall decoration of a flying bird with a walnut wood body and shiny blue metal wings. We still have this on one of our walls.
Also, I got a beautiful opal bracelet for Peg for several books one time. Just recently she gave the 40-year-old bracelet to our granddaughter Amber, as it is her birthstone.
I recall getting Top Value stamps at the old Kroger store.
You could also get stamps at drug stores and gas stations.
Yes, old pack rat Charlie still has some of those books and stamps.
Stamps came in three denominations: one, five and 50.
Back about this time our neighbor, Lucille Guntle, was our babysitter when Peg worked at C.S.B.
We had acquired an old wooden high chair for our son and left it at her house.
After we got the nice, new, fancy, modern, metal one with our Top Value books and took it over to Mrs. Guntle, we got quite a surprise when we picked up our son.
She told us she cut off the top of our wooden antique chair to make a nice stool for our son Terry to sit on at the table like a big boy. No, we didn't have a heart attack.