Did You Know Signature Coins is the (Un)Official Challenge Coin Supplier to Chile?
One of Signature Coins’ many claims to fame is the fact that over the years we’ve managed to retain so many of our customers. When our customers feel taken care of and come back time and time again for future orders, it’s the best indication that we’re accomplishing our goal of being the top distributor of custom challenge coins in the world. When those customers reach out to us from abroad, that’s just icing on the cake.
The Armada de Chile (the Chilean Navy) is one such customer. They’ve come to us for years to create their custom challenge coins, and it’s been a lot of fun to see the different designs for their coins and to get to know certain members of the organization. In the time we’ve been creating coins for them, we’ve seen some similarities amongst their designs. This isn’t to suggest that all of the Chilean Navy coins are the same. Far from it; each customer we work with brings their own unique view to their custom coin order, and our art team is always excited to receive a new request for artwork.
200 Years and Counting
In 2017, the Chilean Navy celebrated its 200th birthday. What followed was a flood of coin orders honoring the milestone. The design of the orders are mostly centered around the emblem created by the navy to signify the occasion, but the unique ways in which the emblem is utilized for each coin shows that the orders are placed by different people each time.
Whether the emblem, which encompasses the Armada de Chile coat of arms, a wave symbol and four stars, is used on a small portion of the larger design or takes up one full face of the coin is a choice left to the officer placing the order. However, a lot of the coins ordered since the 200 year milestone (27 orders in 2018 alone) have featured the emblem in some fashion.
These coins also showcase another one of the thematic similarities among the Armada’s challenge coins: the ships featured on one of the coin faces. These ships aren’t just designed from stock images. They’re taken from images of the actual ships the sailors serve on. Seeing these coin design elements utilized across the majority of challenge coin orders feels like seeing the Navy’s brand standards brought to life.
The Coat of Arms
Another way that the sailors in the Armada de Chile make their coins unique is that they slightly (and respectfully) adjust the Armada’s coat of arms. In its most original form, the Chilean Navy coat of arms looks like this:
For a lot of military branches, their seal or coat of arms is something that’s seen as sacred; representations of it are expected to adhere to a strict set of standards. The coat of arms shows up on a lot of the Chilean coins, but the traditional anchor and rope are often absent, replaced by images more specific to the coin in question.
International Shipping Concerns
When you order with Signature Coins, we ship to anywhere in the continental U.S. for free. However, shipments outside of that area incur a shipping fee. Our international customers don’t turn down ordering because of the international shipping fee, but if there’s ever a way that we can help our customers save money, we always try to find it.
Roughly 177 countries have embassy buildings in the Washington D.C. area alone. One of those embassy buildings happens to be the Chilean Naval Mission. In an effort to save money on shipping, we encourage all of the officers from the Chilean Navy placing orders with us to have them shipped to the Naval Mission in D.C. instead of directly to their base in Chile. This way, a trusted source from the Mission can forward the coins along through the proper channels.
While this shipping method is exercised regularly by our neighbors to the south, we encourage all of our international clients to explore this option on their orders. It might even be less expensive to ship to the Consulate General of Canada in New York than directly to Canada. This strategy is just one of the many ways we strive to save our customers money.
A Signature Concern on Non-English Coins
We tell all of our customers to check the spelling on their coin proof closely when received, but this goes double for coins with non-English text. While members of our sales and art teams speak Spanish, the help offered from a second pair of eyes is indispensable. Furthermore, the names of ships, military units and buildings can feature atypical spellings of otherwise common words. No one knows what’s “right,” or what they need, better than the customer, so we rely on our customers to double and triple check these things. As you can see from the Chilean coins featured, we’ll get the spelling right, but all the help you can give us to those ends will always be appreciated.
It’s a pleasure to serve our national customers, and we’re always excited for the opportunity. But Signature Coins isn’t striving to just be the biggest custom coin company in the U.S.; we’re working to become the top company in the world. And becoming the go-to company for military branches in South America is a sign of a job well done. In addition to the excitement of seeing our reach grow, partnering with the the Armada de Chile also gives us the opportunity to find new ways to solve problems and better serve any new customers that we’ll meet along the way.
