Supermarket pricing stickers

[beccabear67]

Re: Supermarket pricing stickers

My family ran a green grocers for years, not a chain, but we had some products that needed the price stickers and we had a price gun with a supply of rolls of the stickers, they might even be in a box someplace since we closed up shop for good fairly recently. Sometimes the wholesaler would only have stickers that said 'grocery' on them and we'd use those. I remember setting and sticking the stickers with the trigger on such things as bird seed bells, plastic pots and saucers, gardening gloves, bags of soil... we never used them on say apples or flowers which we also sold. Those UPC price codes and checkout scanners are why you don't see stickers outside of wee shops like ours was.

There were very plain stickers once, I remember some plain circles of different colours you could write a price on by hand, but later they'd have little cuts in them... this was to make it harder for dishonest people to take one off of a cheaper item and place it on a more expensive one! They were meant to be a pain to remove. So if you got one on your magazine or comic you had to be careful with removing it, not rush, or you might deface it somewhat (those who cared about that), but then it was even worse with those free gifts taped to the comic paper, especially if the paper stock was very plain! I still have some Dr. Who fanzines with price stickers on them that I've been afraid to try and remove.

[George 1978]

Re: Supermarket pricing stickers

When ITV 3 started to show Coronation Street a couple of years ago, there was an episode where Audrey mispriced jars of HP Sauce as being 14p instead of 41p - she must have got the numbers the wrong way round. I thought to myself that shops don't do that anymore.

[George 1978]

Re: Supermarket pricing stickers

I think price labels stopped being used by the supermarket chains because most products started to have bar codes on the packaging, & when prices changed it was easier to change the shelf labels & update the tills to read the new price.

One independent discount shop near me still uses them.

I thought that it was for the benefit of the customer, so that they didn't have to go to a member of staff and ask, "excuse me, how much is this?"

Even then, barcodes were on certainly already packaging in the days when pricing stickers were used.

[tex]

Re: Supermarket pricing stickers

When i started a 30 year career at the kworrrp (co-op) the stickers were applied one at a time by rolling a strip of stickers between the index finger and thumb, when pricing guns were introduced it was like a gift from the gods

[Twocky61]

Re: Supermarket pricing stickers

When I was a kid, I would go to the supermarket with Dad, Saturday mornings

He would swap price stickers between expensive & cheaper items

So, say, a pack of mince meat & a bottle of detergent

The trick was to swap stickers with say 50p & 10p so as not to be too obvious

[Richard1978]

Re: Supermarket pricing stickers

I think price labels stopped being used by the supermarket chains because most products started to have bar codes on the packaging, & when prices changed it was easier to change the shelf labels & update the tills to read the new price.

One independent discount shop near me still uses them.

[George 1978]

Re: Supermarket pricing stickers

I was thinking about price stickers just now, and the assistant using their pricing gun - we don't see that anymore, I wonder why? Health and Safety reasons, perhaps?

When did supermarkets stop using them - early 1990s, perhaps? I suppose they stopped because customers hated the fact that they couldn't get them off and that they left a sticky residue on their hands.

[Richard1978]

Re: Supermarket pricing stickers

i didnt know Nisa was around in the 80's...?
a local store just gone up around my place..

reminds me of all the out of date tins my nan had in her "pantry"
:-)

I think Nisa are a regional chain that has expanded, there's none near me but I remember using one on holiday in Norfolk in the 1980s.

[jrewing]

Re: Supermarket pricing stickers

i didnt know Nisa was around in the 80's...?
a local store just gone up around my place..

reminds me of all the out of date tins my nan had in her "pantry"
:-)

[memoman]

Re: Supermarket pricing stickers

Never knew that, I've got old pinters, and a couple of halfers, you know, the old indented patterned glass with handle for, well...pints of lager or bitter etc lol, but anyway, the price stickers are still on the bottom of some and its simply 'Delamare' in blue on a white sticker with the price under it, no crest....the pinters were 20p! Sturdy thick glass and heavy....shows how price increases and value of what money buys decreases over the years eh?

I used to have a couple of those pinters.Not sure where they are now.I don't think anyone sells them anymore?Shame :-(

Re: Supermarket pricing stickers

Never knew that, I've got old pinters, and a couple of halfers, you know, the old indented patterned glass with handle for, well...pints of lager or bitter etc lol, but anyway, the price stickers are still on the bottom of some and its simply 'Delamare' in blue on a white sticker with the price under it, no crest....the pinters were 20p! Sturdy thick glass and heavy....shows how price increases and value of what money buys decreases over the years eh?

[FLYING SAUCER]

Re: Supermarket pricing stickers

If my memory serves me right, the Tesco DELAMARE crest was a kind of crown with three balls on the points of the crown? And was it pale blue background and dark blue logo?

A bit like the Rolex watch crest?

Re: Supermarket pricing stickers

Does anyone else remember the 'Delamere' price labels Tesco used to have on their household goods like pinter glassware?

[Richard1978]

Re: Supermarket pricing stickers

I remember Fine Fair used to do the odd thing of having a product number rather than a price on it's labels.

The cashier would key in the code into the till, so it was a step toward barcode scanners.

[Austin Maxi]

Re: Supermarket pricing stickers

When I was a child in the late '70s, I used to collect pricing stickers. We would shop (mainly) at the International supermarket and I would raid the food cupboard for the price labels which I used to stick on my wardrobe door. I amassed quite a collection in the end, but it ended when we moved house at the start of the '80s, and we shopped at a Co-op. The stickers they used came in 3 parts if you peeled them off the packets, and it was too much effort to re-assemble them. I think I had a fascination with numbers. The things you do when you're young!