We went on a trip to Bristol docks, not the harbour and floating harbour in Bristol city, but the actual docks at Avonmouth; if you ever drive past Bristol on the M5 you will go over the bridge and see car-parks full of gleaming brand new vehicles, row after row of them. This is only the smallest part of the docks, there is a huge area bringing everything from molasses to kerosene, to animal food stuffs, to gypsum… and huge, huge ships from all over the world. The docks employ over 7,000 permanent workers, so that is great for the local economy.
After that part of the trip we went to the Oakham treasures… which I guess is a museum, but a museum like no other I have ever been to. It is a museum of home life and has mountains of every sort of domestic item you could imagine, row after row of cases full of… stuff…
One item caught my eye… Green Shield Stamps. These days we have loyalty cards, and get points and bonuses and all sorts of different rewards for shopping in a particular store, or buying from a particular supplier, or using a specific service… way back in the olden days there were Green Shield Stamps. They were actual little stamps which you stuck in books as you can see from my photo, and when you had sufficient you could trade them for something. The scheme started in the USA in the 1950’s and soon spread to the UK. You received one stamp for every 6d (six pence in old money when there were twelve pence in a shilling and twenty shillings in a pound)
My mum used to collect them and I can’t now remember what we got from the stamps, but for households which had to watch the pennies they were an absolute boon! I have a feeling we may have got towels, a heater, some crockery… I know we really benefited from this scheme.
http://www.oakhamtreasures.co.uk/
Lois Elsden 
Yes indeed! We called them Green Stamps and I remember going to the redemption center for our goodies. Glassware, probably, but I remember all kinds of things in that store. We also had Top Value stamps which had a pink elephant for their symbol so as a child I preferred those. Too bad those fell out of fashion, they made good family projects!
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Yes, we kids loved sticking the stamps in and counting them up and looking in the catalogue!
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I bought a chip maker. Remember?
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Of course!
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I thought the Green Shield Stamps scheme was a good one. I was dissapointed though when, in 1965, I bought a second hand car from a place in Cambridge and couldn’t get the stamps for that purchase despite a big advertisment on the garage advertising the scheme!
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Oh yes, I remember these. My Mam, Nana and aunties collected them avidly.
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