Looking up stuff re the horror film The Gorgon (1964), I found this pressbook supplement for that film & The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb .
https://archive.org/details/pressbook-col-the-gorgon/mode/2up
My guess would be Black Stamps were some kind of loyalty program, where cinema patrons could exchange the stamps for something.
- Were the stamps only for horror films from Columbia?
- What are some examples of things you could get in exchange for Black Stamps?
- What was the Columbia Exchange (bottom of page 2)? A physical store, chain of stores? Mail order? Something else?
It was a riff on popular stamp loyalty schemes like the green stamps.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%26H_Green_Stamps
You couldn’t redeem black stamps for anything, so I think it was intended as a fun and familiar draw to get people in to see the movie. You can read a bit more about it here:
https://themagnificent60s.com/2020/08/09/marketing-black-stamps/
The “Columbia exchange” wasn’t a place to exchange stamps, it was a regional distribution hub for the movies themselves.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_exchange
And thanks also for explaining film exchanges. I wonder when they died out, the Wikpedia article makes it sound like it was long, long before the digital era.
Thanks very much!
I thought it was an old idea, interesting to find out it was a revival of an even older idea.
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