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Troy Coon was down to his last five tubes of toothpaste and got nervous.

“I’m back up to 30 now, so I’m OK,” the certified public accountant from Lakewood said.

And not one of them cost Coon more than the sales tax. That’s because Coon, 36, is an expert coupon shopper, maximizing his savings to almost maniacal levels.

The father of two won’t pay for something when he can coupon it for free. And he doesn’t go for one item when he can get more.

“When they’re such insane deals, we kill them,” Coon said of grocery shopping. “I’ve got 30 of all kinds of things: toothbrushes, shampoo, toothpaste. I even had 30 boxes of tampons once.”

Coon exemplifies America’s love affair with the coupon, a slip of paper that can drive shoppers to a frenzy if the deal is good enough.

Druggist Asa Candler had no way of knowing that the white slips of paper he passed out in the late 1800s for a free taste of his new fountain drink – Coca-Cola – would be the start of the coupon craze.

Today, 113 years later, better than 86 percent of all American households use coupons. More than $2.6 billion worth were redeemed last year.

A recently released study of 20 years of coupon data found that, on average, an American household is bombarded with nearly 3,000 coupon offers each year.

In Canada, it’s about 220 a year.

Yet barely 1.5 percent of the 279 billion coupons distributed in the U.S. last year were actually redeemed, the study by ICOM Information & Communications found.

The average value of a redeemed coupon: $1.15.

“It’s startling since so many of us just assume it’s the little old retired ladies at home clipping coupons, but it’s not true at all,” said Charles Brown, co-chairman of the Promotion Marketing Association Coupon Council. “Coupons cross all demographics.”

Clipping and saving has become a necessity for some, an addiction to others and just plain fun for many more. It’s a competition to find just the right coupon for just the right product.

“It’s a game, a challenge, for how much I can save,” said Lea Ann Reitzig, a 40-year-old Denverite who makes sure her family maximizes its shopping dollars. “I totally love it that the stores probably hate me.”

Studies show economics and age have little to do with who uses a coupon. The latest PMA data suggest young people age 18 to 24 are getting into it just as much as the older adults. Their most important category: electronics.

Groceries are still the mainstay of the coupon world and where shoppers spend most of their time looking for deals. Sometimes they’re just too good to pass up, Reitzig said.

“One (store) promotion was buy 10 and get $10 back,” she recalled of a particular cake mix. “I used coupons on top of it and the store ended up having to pay me to buy them.”

She donated the mixes to her son’s preschool for its annual carnival.

Sometimes Reitzig will donate items she “bought” for free – a 99-cent item purchased with a 50-cent coupon doubled by the store – to the Park Hill Food Pantry near her home.

“There’s only so much toothpaste you can use, so why not donate it?” she said.

Not for Coon, whose pantry teems with multiple items. He crows of a deal he landed on Skippy peanut butter. It was 10-for-$10 and Coon had 40-cent-off coupons that when doubled by the store made the jars 20 cents each.

Of course, he bought 10.

In another deal, Coon had a coupon for a free bottle of shampoo. Matched with a 2-for-1 sale, Coon got both bottles free.

“The store only accepts three coupons at a time,” he said. “So we visited the store several times and got 30 bottles.”

The extras were headed to a women’s shelter, he said.

Coon’s gotten so good that the family’s $800-a-month grocery bill is now $200 with coupons.

“And we’ve got 10 times more stuff in the pantry than we ever had,” Coon said. “I love the fall and winter because we start to give all this stuff to shelters.”

There are dozens of websites offering coupons for every conceivable product or service and several others – such as – that provide members detailed information about the best deals and how to find them weekly.

“Many consumers have gotten this coupon thing down to an art,” said Kim McGrigg, spokeswoman for Consumer Credit Counseling Services in Denver. “The key is whether you’re willing to put the time and energy into it.”

Couponing, as it is called, really got going in 1895 when C.W. Post issued a one-cent saver – the first grocery coupon – toward his new health cereal: Grape Nuts. By 1965 half of all Americans were using coupons.

Although more than 80 percent of all manufacturers’ coupons are delivered in the Sunday newspaper, millions of mailboxes are stuffed with coupon deals from direct marketers such as Valpak, the blue envelopes that contain savings offers from a variety of local businesses.

“Our advantage is we send coupons to those who actually want them,” Valpak Inc. spokesman Keith Brickell said. The Largo, Fla., firm last year stuffed 530 million envelopes with 20 billion offers that were sent to 46 million households in North America.

Despite the onslaught, consumers still overlook obvious savings. That’s illustrated by the 30 percent redemption rate of instant coupons, products that have attached peel-off savings to be redeemed at checkout.

Staff writer David Migoya can be reached at 303-954-1506 or dmigoya@denverpost.com.

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