The Market Report

Although many stores have created a brand for their loyalty club, few are as recognizable as ShopRite's Price Plus club. It's an instantly-recognizable name and design, even in its newer version . Here's the pre-2002 version, most likely from the mid-1990s. I still really like the older ShopRite logo and branding, although the script text is better than the old lettering . And yes, this card still works. The account has existed for probably 25 years, and it still works to get a free turkey every Thanksgiving.

The crazy thing about today's memorabilia is that, after a fairly brief time off, you can once again get a Pathmark Advantage Club Card!  I am definitely way too excited about this, but you can see more at pathmark.com . This Pathmark Advantage Club card sure got a lot of use in its day.

Today's memorabilia comes to us courtesy of my grandmother, a loyal Cost Cutters shopper until the end. Technically, the end came when, well, her Cost Cutters closed, the Elizabeth location . But she still calls the Elmora Farmers Market that took half of the building "Cost Cutters." Why she doesn't call Dollar General, in the other half and nearly identical to it, Cost Cutters is beyond me. (She calls the nearby Food Bazaar "Pathmark" still, or on a good day "that new store where Pathmark was.") Well I can't say this card's design is particularly exciting. Both of the stores' logos are pretty much the store's name in an all-caps sans serif font. But it's not overly unattractive either, although the white space in the bottom left corner is a little awkward. Ah, the good old days when companies would include the word "online" in their URL. For a good long time, Kings Food Markets used "www.kingswebsite.co...

Today's Memorabilia is something that will be familiar to a lot of people. In fact, anyone who shopped at Acme from about 1995 to 2015! Early 2000s Acme SuperCard. When Acme opened in a former A&P near my grandmother, she attempted to use her SuperCard, insisting she wouldn't get the discounts without it. I pointed out to her the enormous CARD-FREE SAVINGS banners that happened to be hung over almost every register. I guess the bar code has rubbed off of this one.