Challenge Coins, Military Coins - Unit Coins
Who we are?
We are a husband and wife team who has learned to work well together by recognizing each other’s strength and talents and channeling our work efforts around those strengths and talents.
What we do?
Working closely with our clients we design, produce and deliver custom made challenge coins for them. These coins are used mostly to award and /or show recognition. Most of our customers are Military, however, we also service government, police, fire, rescue, EMT, schools and commercial accounts.
Why we do it?
Unit Coins is first and foremost a for profit business. It is however much more than a pay check to us. It is our way of giving something back to the brave men and women who keep us safe and are willing to lay down their lives to honor the pledge they took. When our country was attacked on 9/11 we were beside our selves. Because of our age we knew that there was nothing concrete we could do except pray for those whose turn it was now to serve. At the time we were in the promotional products advertising business and had been since 1987. We soon found out that even though we were past the age of active service there were many avenues open to us to support those we serve and one of those avenues lead to the creation of Unit Coins. We adopted a soldier.
How did we get started?
We adopted a soldier, who was deployed at the time. We sent him packages of clothing and goodies along with regular emails to which he would reply as his time permitted. As time went by our emails and packages grew to be more frequent. One day the phone rang and on the other end was our soldier calling us from a war zone to say “thank you”. What a thrill that was as well as a humbling experience. We both felt, and still do, that it was our place to thank him and not receive thanks. Soon he was promoted and was waiting orders to return to the States. As it turned out his next assignment would be a base on the East Coast – not far from us. Naturally we arranged for him to come spend the weekend with us. During that visit he showed us his collection of “challenge coins”. He must have had at least 50 in his collection and he was obviously quite proud of them. He had a story for each coin. He even knew where he was stationed when he received a coin, why it was given to him, and in most cases the name and rank of the person who presented the coin to him. With a background in promotional advertising I knew these type of coins existed and where to get them. But I never knew that these coins held such “pride in accomplishment” by the recipient. With our Soldier’s assignment so close to us we were able to spend a good deal of time together, either at his location or our home. I became more and more interested in Challenge Coins and after a long and extensive market analysis we launched Unit Coins on Memorial Day 2006. It has grown and continues to grow at a very rapid rate ever since. It has truly become our way of supporting the Troops. And I am equally happy to report that our Soldier is still with us, four deployments later.