A different type of stamp collecting at Daventry Museum

One of the most notable exhibits currently on display at the museum look at the Green Shield Stamp Company, whose Daventry distribution centre opened in 1970.

The display lets visitors reminisce about the customer loyalty scheme, where you saved and exchanged stamps for items in a Green Shield Catalogue ranging from a Kenwoodfood mixer, to even guide dogs and a tractor. The museum, in New Street, is open from 10am to 4pm this Saturday.

Green Shield was founded in the UK in 1958, and many retailers, supermarkets and petrol stations offered the stamps to customers as an early reward points type scheme.

However, when retailers began driving down prices in the mid-1970s, many of the big names offering the stamps ceased to do so as part of their cost-cutting exercises.

In time Green Shield started offering customers the chance to use their stamps as part of the purchase cost of items with the rest in cash. Eventually the need to use any stamps was dropped, and the company became Argos.