A Polaroid instant camera, electronic typewriter, a fondue set, ashtrays, and a Cathy Rigby aerobic exercise step with an instructional VHS tape.

In the 1980s, if you had the right amount of green, these now outdated items could have been yours.

Also outdated is the green used to acquire these treasures, S&H Green Stamps.

For those of you too young to remember, S&H Green Stamps was a trading stamp rewards program popular from the 1930s to the early 1990s.

The blueprint for Green Stamps was pretty simple, select businesses, such as department stores, gas stations, and grocery stores, would give customers a set amount of stamps depending on how much money they spent.

Customers would collect and paste the stamps into small booklets given away at the store.

It took 1,200 stamps to fill one booklet.

Finally, after all the collecting and pasting, the booklets could be redeemed for various goods at any S&H redemption center across the country.

Let’s say you wanted to use your stamps for a new mixer valued at 11 books; you would need to collect enough stamps to fill 11 booklets that equaled 13,200 stamps.

A typical redemption center featured home goods such as kitchenware, giftware, linens, gardening items, and electronics in addition to toys, camping supplies, and grooming products.

“My mom and her younger sister both did the same thing with the stamps they collected,” said Emma Kline, Williamsport. “They would paste the stamps into those small books and keep them until they needed a present for a bridal shower, birthday, or baby shower. If my Aunt Susan was invited to a bridal shower, she always took the same gift from S&H, a pair of silver-plated candlesticks that had swirl glass hurricanes. I still have the set my aunt gave me when I got married, sitting on the fireplace mantel.”

A rewards catalog from the early 1990s featured a selection of treasures, including a Bundt cake pan and cake tote, a vinyl tablecloth, diaper pail, toaster oven, a camping tent, a set of four TV trays, curling iron, steam iron, and a nifty waffle iron.

S&H offered a small selection of televisions, radios, and VHS players for the folks that had a large number of filled booklets.

For many years the redemption center in Williamsport was located at the corner of West Third St. and Walnut St. next to the former Weis Market.

When the building was demolished to expand the parking lot for Weis, the redemption center relocated to Lycoming Creek Road for a short time before the company went out of business.

“When I was a little kid, my mom was an avid Green Stamps shopper by only patronizing stores that gave stamps. We always did our grocery shopping at Weis Market since they gave Green Stamps,” said Patty Arnold, Williamsport. “The first Saturday of the month, it was my job to help my mom paste all the stamps she saved from the previous month. She kept her stash of Green Stamps in an old cigar box she got from my grandfather. The booklets would always smell like my grandfather’s cigars. Mom would often joke the girls at the redemption center must think she smokes like a chimney. Forty years later, whenever I smell someone smoking a cigar, I think of those afternoons with my mom and how life has changed. If Green Stamps were introduced right now for the first time, it would be a flop. People don’t have the time or the patience for such things.”

During the 1960s, however, S&H claimed Green Stamps were so popular the numbers were staggering.

Nearly half of American families saved Green Stamps.

On average, an Oklahoma printing factory printed 850 million stamps a week.

S&H claimed the company printed three times the number of stamps than the post office.

The company also claimed their rewards catalog was the largest publication in America.

By the early 1990s, life became more hectic, more women were working outside the home, and collecting and pasting stamps into booklets was too much work.

Like most things in life, popularity and interest started to wane, causing S&H Green Stamps to close its doors while closing a unique chapter of American retailing.