A&P I believe had Plaid stamps.

My late mother-in-law and my wife both saved cigarette coupons instead of trading stamps. My wife acquired an avocado GE electric skillet with a tilt leg, and a couple of record cabinets. The skillet is long gone, unfortunately, but we still have the cabinets.

After my MIL passed away, we found an old tin full of expired Raleigh coupons.

Stater Bros. doled them out.

S&H morphed into S&H GreenPoints and then transitioned to FreshPoints (link).

As I recall a lot more stores gave Blue Chip stamps than S&H, and my mom collected both.  I think there's an old card table from the Blue Chip redemption center store kicking around somewhere, but the weirdly folding chairs that came with it are long gone.  That store was in a more suburban part of town near one of the early iterations of a big box discount store.

The S&H redemption center was downtown, in a building that was clearly built for S&H as its original owner(?) occupier, and is still standing.  The exterior had large patches of green tile accents, or perhaps they were porcelain on metal. 

The Blue Chip redemption store may have become a bank branch.  I honestly can't remember if the bank was there at the same time or not, but it's the right size and location for the redemption center.

We had S&H Stamps around here, several stores participated.  Don't remember them being given automatically, the cashier usually asked if we wanted them.   I've found a few catalogs from S&H over the years, one of the POD with late 50's Westinghouse appliances was from one of these.  

My mother saved points/coupons from another food company, and when she finally had enough, redeemed them for an entire flatware service for 12 including serving pieces and iced-tea spoons.  There was a limit on the amount one household could redeem so she cajoled friends and family to send them in for her and built up the flatware collection.  I'll have to ask if she remembers who offered that program, I can't remember now.  She still has some of it.

When my son was school-aged, we saved the education $$ points from food boxes and turned them into the school for redemption.  I don't believe they have that program any longer.  

Hi Pete, I guess that's why we both turned out so well.

John 

We had Red & White stores scattered around town, but they were primarily found in far flung less populated areas.  I'm sure having a Red & White affiliation afforded mom & pop operations the benefits and lower costs associated with a larger entity's purchasing power.  This would be useful for the disappearing mom & pop operations that are barely surviving in today's retail grocer environment.  I don't know if United Grocers is still around.  You knew a store was affiliated with UG if they offered the Bonnie Hubbard house brand, but the stores themselves kept their own names.

Here in the Bay Area, and perhaps other parts of California, we had Star and Bar gas stations that gave out their own house brand of stamps.  I can't remember how they were redeemed, but Star and Bar stations were usually lower priced than those of the major oil companies.  Star and Bar later became Regal stations, which I think retained the stamp policy and had the Regal Beagle as their mascot.  I think the last Regal locally disappeared in the mid '70s and could have been a casualty of the 1973 Arab oil embargo.

Barry, to fold the chairs, you had to lift/unsnap the seat from the legs and hold it against the chair back while turning each leg inward 90 degrees, then drop the seat back down so it covered the folded-in legs.  Weird, but as your mom's chairs demonstrate, they were very sturdy.  It's possible my sister may have the four chairs that go with my table.  I'll have to ask her.

I remember my mom collecting those stamps back when I was under 10 years old. Then after a couple years she stopped, and I never found out why. Now I guess it was because she found out it was a scam.

Your mom more than likely saved Betty Crocker coupons to acquire her flatware. A lot of housewives used this method to acquire their flatware, of which Oneida Twin Star was one of the most popular patterns.