Monthly Archives: November 2017

Trading Stamps – The Fever

If you wish to brush up on your history of S&H Green Stamps, head over hereOtherwise, read on about K-Savers trading stamps.


This is the book you’d stick your K-Savers stamps in, all notated (as far as I know) as worth 25 units of something.  The book is 3-3/4″ by 5-7/8″.  The stamps, shown below, each measure 1/2″ x 1-7/8″.
In the 1950s, Oakwood Markets, dating from the late 40s, was seeing a bubbling up of Green Stamp Fever, fed by market competitor Giant Supermarkets.  Figuring to find a parade and get in front of it (a favorite suggestion of Don Raines, my former boss), Wallace Boyd, one of the founders of Oakwood Markets, started Tennessee Stamp Company and began to spread K-Saver stamps across their multiple locations (11 or so in the 70s).  K-Savers had a catalog and a brick-and-mortar store at 813 Eastman Road – the site, next to Sloopy’s, is now home to a gas station.

   

Inside front cover, showing part of a stamp page, and inside of the back cover.

1157 Eastman Road was the location of the Oakwood Market in Greenacres Shopping Center. And note there are none of the legal conditions (you don’t own the stamps!) that S&H put on the back cover of their redememption booklets.

 

WKPT Studio

wkpt

I’m taking a chance here, but I think this was taken before the fire that severely damaged the WKPT studios.  I don’t recognize the studio configuration or that strange wall treatment.

I didn’t have any luck tracking down when Pilgrims Songs sheet music was published, but the microphone is a Western Electric 639 or so, made in the late 1930s (after 1941, it would have been branded as an Altec).  This mike, or one like it, was still around when I was at WKPT.  People had their preferences as to the setting.  I liked cardioid and got fussed at one time for switching it.  Today, these mikes are selling for around $600 to $800 on ebay.

There is nothing of interest on the back of this card…no publisher, no photographer attribution.  Annoying.