Award coins are designed to recognize achievement, performance, and results. Unlike recognition coins that say “thank you,” award coins say you earned it.
Whether you’re celebrating top performers, contest winners, or milestone accomplishments, custom award coins create a tangible symbol of success that people take pride in. From corporate competitions to elite recognition programs like President’s Club, award coins turn achievement into something lasting.
Organizations across industries use award coins, achievement coins, and award coin medallions to highlight excellence, reinforce performance, and motivate teams to reach the next level.
Trusted by teams across industries
Award Coins That Represent Real Achievement
The best employee award coins do not just mark a moment. They represent the effort it took to get there. From high polish finishes to detailed 3D designs, every element of your coin can reinforce the prestige of the award. Add custom engraving, sequential numbering, or dual-sided artwork to highlight both the accomplishment and the organization behind it.
Whether you are recognizing individual performance or team success, custom award coins elevate the moment and make it unforgettable.
How to Make Award Challenge Coins
Organizations that recognize performance and achievement use award challenge coins in a variety of ways. They’re presented at award ceremonies, team competitions, sales milestones, and leadership events to celebrate success and highlight top performers.
Creating custom award challenge coins starts with defining what the award represents. Are you recognizing sales performance, team excellence, or a major milestone? Consider incorporating your company logo, the name of the award, and any key achievements or dates. A strong design should feel meaningful and clearly reflect the accomplishment being honored.
Send us your ideas by filling out a free quote form, and we’ll handle the rest. It also helps to explore the different customization options available for award coins before getting started. Take a look below to discover ways to elevate your custom award challenge coins and create something recipients will be proud to earn and keep.
Award Challenge Coin Design Options
When it comes to creating custom award challenge coins, one of the first things to consider is the type of metal plating you need. The finish you choose can help communicate the level of achievement and prestige tied to the award. Depending on your program, you may even want to order the same design in multiple plating options.
For example, many organizations choose gold, silver, and copper plating to represent different tiers of performance. Gold can highlight top performers or highest honors, while silver and copper recognize additional levels of achievement. Not every award program requires tiers, but this approach creates a clear and impactful recognition system.
Award coins often include company logos, award titles, and event details, so the next important design element to consider is color. We use Pantone colors for all of our corporate challenge coin designs, making it easy to match your brand and maintain consistency across your awards.
Make sure to send us the Pantone colors your organization uses, and we’ll apply those exact colors to your coins for a clean, professional look.
Another key factor in award coin design is size and shape. The standard size for challenge coins is about 1.75”, but many award coins are made larger, typically between 2” and 3”, to create a more substantial and premium feel. If you want to make your awards stand out even more, custom shapes or functional designs are a great option.
Functional coins, like bottle opener coins, add a unique and practical element to your award. These designs not only look impressive but also give recipients something they can use and keep on display. For proper functionality, bottle opener coins should be at least 2.5” in size.
Pricing and Shipping Large Orders of Award Challenge Coins
The cost of custom award challenge coins depends on the size of your design and the total quantity ordered. For a detailed breakdown of unit pricing, you can visit our challenge coin pricing page. The best way to get accurate pricing for your specific project is to fill out a free quote form.
We’ll provide you with a free quote along with a digital proof of your artwork. Every order includes free overnight shipping, and our standard turnaround time is 14 days or less. Need coins at more than one office or site? We can usually arrange delivery to a second business location for an additional shipping charge — talk to your sales rep about the details. For events or teams spread across many locations, most customers have us ship everything to one address with our free overnight shipping and redistribute from there; we don’t offer shipping to individual recipients’ addresses.
Many of the organizations we work with distribute award coins across multiple offices, departments, or event locations. Most choose to have all coins shipped to a single location and handle distribution internally. If you need a second business location on the same order, we can usually arrange that for an additional shipping charge — ask your sales rep.
Most award coins we produce are between 1.75” and 2”, striking a balance between detail and a premium feel.
Color is another important consideration when designing your coins. We use Pantone colors for all custom challenge coin designs to ensure accurate brand matching. If your organization has specific brand guidelines or color codes, include them when submitting your quote, and our design team will incorporate them into your coins.
If you have any questions about pricing or shipping large orders of award challenge coins, feel free to give us a call or email us at info@signaturecoins.com.
Recognize Achievement with Custom Award Challenge Coins
Our Signature Coins team has been creating high-quality custom challenge coins since 2000. Award challenge coins are a powerful way to recognize achievement, celebrate performance, and reinforce a culture of excellence across your organization.
A custom-designed award coin gives your team something tangible to represent their success. Whether you’re honoring top performers, milestone achievements, or competition winners, these coins create lasting recognition that people are proud to earn and keep.
What kind of award coin are you looking to create? Share your ideas with us, and we’ll help bring your vision to life with a design that truly reflects the achievement.
From Your Vision to a Finished Masterpiece
Don't touch a pixel. Our award-winning design team handles everything, you just share your idea and approve the proof.
Explore Finishes & Upgrades
Custom Coin Customer Reviews
Common Challenge Coin Questions
A challenge coin is usually a metal coin or medallion, bearing an organization's insignia, emblem or logo and carried by the organization's members. Traditionally, challenge coins were used by the military and displayed by service men and women to prove exclusive membership when challenged, and to enhance the military units' morale.
Historically, challenge coins were awarded by military unit commanders in recognition of special achievement made by a member of the unit. They are also known to be exchanged and traded during recognition visits to different international organizations, bases and service tours. These coins have been heavily collected by active and retired service members and law enforcement personnel for years.
Modern challenge coins are made in a variety of sizes and often include popular culture references such as superheroes as well as known characters in a parody. Many companies today are using them to build morale in teams, link people with similar interests and even to promote their brand. Challenge coin designs today are pushing the boundary of what a challenge coin could mean or be used for. One thing is for sure, personalized coins further strengthen the sense of bond within people that both give and receive them.
Challenge coins are often used as a physical token or symbol to represent membership to an organization, unit, or team.
Challenge coins also serve as a lasting personal award for anyone that has received one. Since they are custom and long lasting, challenge coins serve well to commemorate the time and experience put in to overcome overwhelming obstacles or the extraordinary effort and sacrifice needed to reach a given achievement. These keepsake coins become a life long reminder of the achievements made.
Our bravest first responder services also have a history of using challenge coins. Whether for fire departments, emergency medical technicians or law enforcement officers, challenge coins have been used to award bravery, acts of heroism and department camaraderie.
Many companies today have been started by veterans, or are veteran owned and are beginning to use the challenge coin tradition to help represent accomplishments in their businesses. This modern approach to awarding challenge coins has garnered some criticism from the traditionalists. Signature Coins has been making challenge coins for 20 plus years, and we see more and more companies joining in on awarding custom challenge coins to customers, staff, and volunteers. They are using them to build morale in teams, link people with similar interests and even to promote their brand or charities.
Generally speaking you give someone a challenge coin when you want to honor them for a good deed or for their hard work.
Challenge coins still play a major role in the military today, much like a "Thank you Plus" or "Great Job Plus". In the armed forces not every action rates an honorable medal or certificate, for those moments when someone is deserving of more than a thank you, awarding them with a challenge coin fills the gap.
As a very simple miltary example. You're out on a 3 day field op. One of your guys or gals busts their butt during a particularly stressful couple hours of it. Shows great attitude, effort, and was overal top notch. If you tried to write it up, it wouldn't "quite" be "award worthy" but definitely deserved "recognition."
Now even if you're not a veteran or a member of the armed forces, you can still recognize and award someone with custom challenge coins.
You can use challenge coins to reward employees after the completion of a special project or if huge accomplishments have been made company wide. The coin design can be representative of the achievement, the employee or the company goals. Studies show when employees are recognized for a job well done, they feel more satisfied with their job performance, are more likely to reach for higher goals, and are more loyal to their organizations.
Finding the right time and place to give someone a challenge coin can be, well, a bit challenging.
-
Military tradition has a few ways of approaching this honor. One being "The Secret Handshake" where commanding officers, department officials or the president himself would shake a soldiers hand and "slip" them the coin via the handshake. Transferring the coin shouldn't be dramatic or obvious, like a quiet wink and a nod, this honor is more personal to the people giving and receieving the award and less ceremonial. Although a bit more obvious, another military tradition is to hand them out in front of a formation or during a meeting, but it's more commonly done one on one.
-
As more civilians and businesses use challenge coins, they have taken a more ceremonious and inclusive approach to awarding them. When looking to give a challenge coin to an employee or team member most businesses will do it during a team meeting. Some businesses have even integrated their employee award recognition into their annual and quarterly ceremonies. Awarding their employees in front of others can be a great way to show the rest of the team that you too can be "recognized" if the effort is there.
-
Modern marketers are also finding that custom challenge coins make for great business cards, so many high end service providers, such as lawyers, accountants and commercial developers are now giving their custom coins out as a means of promoting themselves or their business offerings.
Challenge coins typically cost $3.00 -$5.00 per coin for a full production run of 100 coins generally speaking.
More specifically though, it depends. Challenge coin pricing is dependent on a variety of factors including size, quantity, and coloration. Your organization's insignia or logo, as well as the brand standards surrounding it, will often dictate coloration. The level of complexity, industry standards, and personal preference will dictate the size of the coin.
You can view our challenge coin pricing here.
Designing challenge coins is a lot of fun, but there's also a ton of things to think about before getting started. Luckily, we have years of experience making custom coins, and we're happy to help you every step of the way.
We have put together a how-to guide that will tell you everything you need to know about challenge coin design.
Challenge Coin Design 101: A How-To Guide For Creating Challenge Coins
