Delco Restaurant Redeems 40-Year-Old Gift Certificate
It expired shortly after Mikhail Gorbachev took power.
Sisters Sue Holden (left) and Cindy Miller, who recently tried to redeem a 40-year-old gift certificate at the Clam Tavern in Clifton Heights, Delaware County. / Photograph courtesy the Clam Tavern
Customers ask the servers at Delco’s Clam Tavern a wide variety of questions. Can I substitute shrimp for lobster in the lobster fra diavolo? Do you still have the filet mignon special topped with lump crabmeat? Do you have any Cape May Salts today? (The answer to all three questions is almost invariably an enthusiastic “yes.”) But not all questions are quite as expected. Case in point: “Will you take this Clam Tavern gift certificate? It’s from 1984.”
Sue Holden, who was at the restaurant with her sister, Cindy Miller, was the one asking. It was Miller’s birthday.
After their mom passed away in 2022, the two women and their sisters, Lisa DiSalle and Judy Nigro, embarked on the huge task of cleaning out her house. “She was a bit of a hoarder,” Holden explains. “We found hundreds of birthday and thank-you cards just stuffed in her cabinets, many with cash still in them. I can’t even tell you how much money it added up to. But it was a lot.”
Also among the finds was a $25 gift certificate to the Clam Tavern, dated June 15, 1984. Back in those days, the Clam Tavern had two locations, one in Clifton Heights, where the Clam Tavern stands today, and one on MacDade Boulevard in Collingdale, the latter closing in the late 1980s, according to current Clam Tavern owner Tony Blanche. Notably, the gift certificate read, in all caps: “NOT VALID AFTER ONE YEAR OF PURCHASE.” Holden says DiSalle and her husband gave the mom and dad the $25 gift certificate as a thank-you present for helping the couple buy their first house.
Holden and Miller made a pact that they would eventually get together at the Clam Tavern, a restaurant they say they hadn’t been to together since they were with their parents, probably in the late 1960s when the family lived in Havertown. After that, the family moved further away, making the Clam Tavern a less convenient destination. The two sisters kept trying to schedule a dinner, but life kept getting in the way, until recently.
The Clam Tavern gift certificate from 1984 (photo courtesy the Clam Tavern)
At the end of the meal, their server, Makenna, presented them with a check, which is when Holden asked that most unexpected question. The sisters were sure the answer would be a no. After all, the gift certificate pretty clearly stated it would expire in one year, meaning it became useless shortly after Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union. Even if it hadn’t had that clause in all caps, gift certificates don’t last indefinitely, and when you take inflation into account, their purchasing power diminishes over time. That $25 gift certificate would be equivalent to approximately $75.83 today. Plus, the ownership had changed in the four-decade interim. “But I figured, ask anyway,” says Holden. “All they can do is say no.”
Makenna got in touch with Blanche, who has owned the Clam Tavern since 1999 and worked in the kitchen during the previous ownership, from 1977 until 1980. And the sisters were surprised to learn from Makenna that Blanche would honor the 1984 gift certificate.
“To me, it was a no-brainer,” says Blanche. “This is called the hospitality business. We’re here to spread joy and cheer. There wasn’t really a question of whether to take it or not.”
The sisters were delighted. Holden says the meal was “fantastic.” Alas, the pair didn’t share the restaurant’s namesake dish, the clams. “I’m very allergic to clams,” Holden says. “So ironic.”
