Five Sperry and Hutchinson trading stamp designs for 1896 to 1897 are shown. The earliest stamps were black and their design is unknown, so a plausible reconstruction is shown based upon the earliest known designs. The second stamp was introduced in various cities around Feb 1897 and the Brooklyn design is shown. It was not actually copyrighted and when threatened with a lawsuit in July 1897 they replaced "copyrighted" with "trading stamp" (3rd design). In August and September 1897, Cleveland, Detroit, Newark and perhaps a few other places had designs like the 4th one. By Sep 1, 1897, the fifth design was introduced and this was soon adopted everywhere.