Ah! Outstanding! Thank you!
I've read many of the forum posts regarding challenge coins and completely understand why some people dislike them altogether. However, by the time I retired from the military I had amassed a nice but small collection of challenge coins that I had been given over the years…from the time they were simple and single color to the retirement coin I received from the Secretary of the Army. I'm in the camp of yes we should consider organizing them and providing some focus for military challenge coins…BUT…with caveats. My recommendations would be (I'm no expert on the website so these are only one person's ideas, and focused on USA only as a template):
- Limit the main categories to military, government, and commercial;
- In the military section have categories for General Officers, Ship, Division, Brigade, Battalion, Company, Team (or the equivalent for non-Army services of course), and very importantly Medal of Honor recipients. There is a fairly focused group of collectors out there for Medal of Honor recipient coins (I only have one I was given but am very proud of it, and of having worked with the man). I'm on the fence about whether civilian leaders of the military would be best organized into military or government (naturally, they are the leaders of our military…so strong argument there);
- Government would be any other agency within government that is not an Armed Service;
- Commercial is where the mess would be…but there are some very nice groups of coins out there. For example, USAA's annual conference coins, Veteran Service Organizations and such. The catch all subcategory might have to be just an “other private organizations” bin for businesses who very generously give out coins at special events. I've received a fair number of these personally from extraordinarily nice people in airports and at events when I attended in an official capacity in uniform…but to be truthful this would be the real catch-all category.
Anyways just thought I'd put my thoughts into the mix.
Before I go, I'll share a story. I used to just have my challenge coins in a cigar box. They weren't a thing for me. I was appreciative of course of having received them but I didn't focus on them. I used to take my two youngest sons weekly to Hallenbeck's coin shop in Colorado Springs. They are a wonderful family-run business and had special grab bags for kids that were ALWAYS worth the $10. Most of the time I was in uniform there because we would go after school/work. They knew us by then and knew we were coming for the kids to get a grab bag. If they were out they'd send someone to the back to create some quickly. Very, very nice people. One day old man Hallenbeck approached me and asked me about challenge coins…I didn't even get what he meant at first. Then I realized “oh, those things like the ones I have in my cigar box!” He said that if I ever wanted to part with him to please think of him first. Of course I said I would. He is a kind, friendly man, how could I say no? What this did was that it made me go home and think about what just happened. This man's main business wasn't coins…it was bullion. The coins were obviously a love of his…but his money maker was bullion and buying/selling bullion. Many times we'd come to the store and there were lines out the door of people cashing in the things they found at grandma's. This man could collect anything. I'm sure that shop processed a million dollars of bullion a week. Easily. But he asked about challenge coins. So that intrigued me and I started paying attention to them. I made a display for them in my library. The bottom line is that this interaction convinced me that challenge coins were going to be big one day. I still believe it. More so than most tokens or exonumia.
