Talk:Green Shield Stamps/Archives/2013

Merger proposal

Both this article and S&H Green Stamps are relatively short, and information from each is repeated in both. Unless both can be expanded readily, I suggest they be merged. The only problem I can see right now with a merger is that this article is categorized with UK-related categories, which might be confusing in an article about a US-originated company. B7T (talk) 13:49, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Merge the articles; they can always be expanded and spun-off later. Include only the categories that you feel are relevant. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 15:11, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

It seems that Green Shield Stamps were not operated by S&H. See Pink Stamps below. I will remove the merge tag. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 14:26, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Pink Stamps

I find this sentence fragment confusing:

Pink Stamps (used as Sperry & Hutchinson could not use green)

Were Green Shield Stamps licensed by S&H, as suggested in Owen's seminar paper [1], or did S&H operate the competitor Pink Stamps, because Tomkins got the colour green first?

If Owen is correct, we should simply delete the portion in parentheses. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 14:15, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Owen is quite likely wrong - that era of history is not the topic of his paper. The DNB article on Tompkins, though a tertiary source, at least confirms the original author of the Wikipedia article. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 14:26, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Change of Green Shield Stores to Argos

Someone has labelled the paragraph "Dubious - Discuss". Absolutely nothing dubious about it. That is exactly what happened. I remember the furore in the newspapers at the time and I actually watched the signwriters change the badging over the door of the Cardiff Green Shield shop....I still to this day slip up and say "I am off to Green Shield to buy a telly" 21stCenturyGreenstuff (talk) 01:15, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for responding. The ODNB article says the 2 businesses were run separately from each other. Thanks to your eyewitness account, I am willing to swap the {{dubious}} tag for a {{fact}} tag. Could you dig up the furore in the newspapers as that would help put some clarity into the article? It would be nice if we could explain some detail, such as: were all Green Shield shops rebranded Argos? were they sold by one company to the other? where could stamps be redeemed after 1973? --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 10:31, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

OK. Yes initially Green Shield and Argos were run as separate companies. The GS shops came first as an outlet to cash in the books of saved stamps, but having set up the distribution network for goods they realised there was a market niche for selling those same goods for cash over the counter, hence Argos which was run as a superficially separate company but with a shared distribution network. But there were always very few Argos outlets and mostly only in major cities. All GS shops were rebranded as Argos in the change, placing an outlet (as still today) in most UK towns and cities. For some time after the change Argos stores accepted the stamps in full or part payment for goods. Additionally, if I remember correctly, stamps could be exchanged by post using Recorded Delivery packets. As for finding newspaper articles, that would be tricky without spending hours in the British Library ploughing through microfiche records...this was all before the Internet had really got under way.21stCenturyGreenstuff (talk) 13:27, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

That is very interesting information indeed: thanks.

Several decades of UK newspapers have been digitized and are accessible from the net. I sometimes use my local public library's website when I need to back up a 'fact' that I have written into a Wikipedia article.

--Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 14:06, 3 October 2008 (UTC)