Actually Jerry, we have had some of this before but it never gets old does it? Just us!!!

The two best things that were gas station "give-a-ways" were either themed products or stamps. Marathon Oil here in Ohio gave away glasses and dishes using the BC comic strip as a theme. The stuff was a pretty good quality too. The Sinclair folks used their Dino the Dinosaur theme for years and a lot of that stuff is fetching some good prices now.

Trading Stamps were the big thing from the '50's into the '70's in both gas stations and grocery stores. For a gas jockey they were an incredible pain in the ass, especially when it rained! But some folks would switch allegiances based on what kind of stamps you gave. Although most people collected all of them, most also had one as a preference based on their shopping habits at first. But believe me, if a grocer or gas station switched stamps, it was equally likely that the customer would find another store or station as it was for them to swap their favorite stamps!

I saw the real power of stamps in the first gas station I worked at. They had done some work for a customer that went considerably more than they had quoted and the customer raised hell. After some heated discussion, the station owner offered the guy triple stamps on his bill. Almost immediately the fight was over and everyone was buddy-buddy again! Even though this fellow paid a thousand bucks when he was expecting only 500 (quite a sum and quite a difference in the '60's), he was happy as a clam with his S&H Green stamps for $3000. As a matter of fact, he kept on dealing at the station with never another mention of the doubled bill!

Most of the stamp companies had catalogs and showrooms in the bigger cities. As a kid I well remember going in and getting such wonderful crap as TV trays and a deep fryer. Both of these were mandatory household items in the '50's. I often wondered at those who had the patience and whatever else it took to save for TV's and vacation trips which took about a zillion books of stamps.

Spaw