Learning Center

People still argue about where challenge coins began, and no one has a clean paper trail. One telling places them in ancient Rome, with a soldier receiving a stamped coin for distinguished service and keeping it instead of spending it.

The version you will hear most often starts in the First World War. A wealthy lieutenant in a U.S. Army Air Service squadron struck bronze medallions with the squadron emblem and gave one to each pilot. One pilot was shot down behind German lines and taken prisoner, then escaped to a French outpost carrying only that medallion in a pouch around his neck. French troops took him for a spy until someone knew the emblem, and the story says they poured him wine rather than shooting him. The practice spread through the Army and Air Force after the Second World War and Vietnam, reached every branch by the 1990s, and then entered police departments, firehouses, federal and state agencies, and civilian groups.

They are called challenge coins because of the challenge, which most people know as the coin check. The name points to a dare that can cost you a round of drinks for everyone at the table. That risk is real enough that people check their pockets before they leave the house.

What the challenge does for a group is keep the coin in circulation and the group's identity in everyday life. The custom turns membership into something you take with you to work and to a quiet drink after a shift. You carry yours because the people who share the same mark expect it to travel with you. Leave it behind and you have stepped out of the circle for an evening.

A check usually starts with a coin slammed down on the bar or the table, or held up while the person calls it out loud. Everyone present who belongs to the group has to produce their own coin. Whoever cannot buys the next round for everyone who did. If every person there produces one, the member who started the check buys instead.

Rules vary from unit to unit, and most groups write their own. You may get seconds or a minute to produce the coin. A piece in a display rack at home usually does not count, and some outfits want it within arm's reach. Drop one on a hard floor and you have often started an accidental check on everyone who heard it. Checks happen in bars, mess halls, reunions, conferences, and sometimes an office hallway. A group with a new coin should agree on its rules before the first check.

The classic presentation is a handshake. The giver holds the coin in the palm and it passes during the grip, often with nothing said, and the recipient pockets it without a show. Coins are also presented in front of a room at ceremonies, graduations, promotions, retirements, award nights, and official visits, where being seen receiving it is the point. When someone cannot be there, the coin is mailed.

For a public night or a coin that has to travel, how it is boxed is part of the honor. We include velvet presentation boxes, acrylic display cases, coin capsules, and velvet bags in the presentation options. Some people leave the coin in the box on a desk. Others empty it into a pocket before they sit down. Both are right, as long as the piece can come out when it needs to.

Keep the coin on you, since a check can start without warning. Passing off another person's coin as your own is a hard line. Do not drill a hole through yours or turn it into a keychain, a belt buckle, a necklace, or other jewelry, because an altered piece is generally refused in a check. If a coin was placed in your hand, it stays with you. Giving that one away is not done.

People understand the difference between a coin you earned and one from a gift shop. Do not hand out unit or department coins to people outside the group without the leader's say, since the worth comes from who may carry it. Receive one with thanks and put it away without a speech. Nobody asks what it cost. Groups differ on the smaller points, and when you join, the members will teach you the local rules soon enough.

People carry a coin out of pride and as proof they belong. It can sit in a pocket as a reminder of a deployment, a station, a ship, or someone who put it in your hand. The check makes the carrying automatic. You stop thinking about it the same way you stop thinking about a wallet.

Trading is a tradition of its own. Members of different units and agencies swap coins when they work a job together, at conferences, at reunions, and on official visits. A coin from another outfit marks a shared job or event. Collectors hunt coins from famous units, presidents, secretaries, commanders, and events like inaugurations, and those change hands for real money. Plenty of racks read like a résumé built posting by posting, and trading is how most of the extra coins arrived. An earned coin is never traded away, and people in the hobby know an earned piece from a swapped one.