Custom Dual Plated Challenge Coins

What Is a Dual Plated Challenge Coin?

A dual plated challenge coin carries two different metal finishes on the same piece. Rather than plating the whole coin gold or the whole coin silver, we mask off part of your artwork and plate each area separately, so one element ends up in a completely different metal than everything around it.

The effect is nothing like adding a color. Enamel sits in the recessed areas of a design and reads as paint; a second plating changes the metal itself, so the highlighted element still catches light like metal and still looks minted rather than filled. That is why a gold badge on a silver coin reads as a badge instead of a yellow shape.

Create a Coin That’s Anything But Ordinary When You Include Dual Plating

The number one rule with dual plating is that the second finish has to highlight the design in a meaningful way. We’ve seen all kinds of creative ways to work two or more metal finishes into one design, and we’ve seen some less than ideal ones too — usually when the second plating is chosen for novelty rather than to separate something worth separating.

A great example comes from the world of police challenge coins. Plenty of departments choose high polish silver for the body of the coin and then plate the badge in the design in high polish gold. The gold badge creates an authentic look, matching the real hardware an officer wears, and it lifts the badge off a busy field of stars and stripes.

Sometimes letters are plated differently to give a message emphasis. Other times a darker plating is used in the recessed areas so the raised areas stand out in more detail. The decision is yours, and the free proof shows you the result before you commit.

One real constraint to plan around: we can combine two or more metal platings on the same coin, but we can’t mix a high polish metal with an antique metal. So a gold-and-silver coin means either high polish gold with high polish silver, or antique gold with antique silver. Every other pairing across our coin plating options is fair game — copper on black nickel, gold on black metal, antique silver on antique copper.

Dual Plated Police, Fire and Military Coins

Dual plating earns its keep fastest on coins built around insignia, which is why so many of them end up with police departments, fire departments and military units. A badge, a shield, a Maltese cross or a unit crest is already the focal point of the artwork; giving it its own metal makes that hierarchy obvious at arm’s length.

The pattern repeats across the coins on this page. A department badge in gold on a thin-blue-line field. A NATO compass rose in antique silver inside a gold ring of member flags. A gold Maltese cross on an antique silver anniversary coin for a volunteer fire department. A police academy coin whose graduating agencies ring the edge while the academy’s own badge sits in gold at the center.

It works just as well for corporate programs. Plate a logo mark in gold against an antique silver body, or run a tiered years of service program where the accent metal escalates with tenure while the coin body stays identical across every level.

The Best Dual Plated Coins From The Best Challenge Coin Maker

Our Signature Coins team has 26 years of experience crafting custom challenge coins for teams throughout all industries. We take pride in our work and take special care to ensure every project is as close to perfect as possible. When you order dual plated coins, you’re sure to get something that is anything but ordinary: beautifully crafted, original, and completely custom made to your specification.

To get started, all we need are a few ideas and a sense of which two finishes appeal to you. Fill out one of our free quote forms and our art team will begin crafting your design — the first proof is ready within 48 hours, and all artwork and revisions are free.