Like a thousand other websites we also have the history of the Challenge Coin for your reading pleasure. Ours is a lot more fun because it’s factual. Unlike every other websites about coins you will find a strict “no BS policy” here in the U.S. Challenge Coin world. The same goes for our history of the challenge coin. So if you’re ready he it goes:
The challenge coin was born out of the….hmmm…I am not sure. Perhaps it was created by French…hmm…I don’t like that beginning either. Wait I know, it was created on impact by a WWII pilot…no, no, no….this can’t be it. Man this is tough. Every site out there has a version and even Wikipedia quotes some kind of history of the challenge coin. It’s amazing how we have different tales of how it became the object it is today. I just wish I could weave something about Vietnam in here but I won’t.
The history of the challenge coin is more myth than legend. Sure it has history and we have no doubt it’s a fairly good story but it remains to be proved. Our stance on the history of the challenge coin is that the history is not proven except by a few stories you find on some websites. We don’t put any weight into those stories except for a decent story hour to get you into the site and open your wallet a bit. So instead of telling you how some guy got shot out of the sky or how ammo troops issued the bottoms of their spent rounds to deserving individuals we ask you this one basic question. Does the history really influence your decision to collect?
If you answered yes then it’s ok. You can choose the history you read. You can decide what to accept as truth from tale. Since the day this company was built we took a hard stance not to publish a history though we received many prints of the possible origins and emails asking why we don’t. The history is non-existent in our eyes and that’s our position. We mark this hobby with what we can prove and that’s the way it should be.
To be fair we should also make a point that much of what you read on Wiki and other articles on the web are for selling purposes. Only a few websites offer genuine information on the hobby itself. There is nothing wrong with that but it has proven to be more inaccurate than anything else. Even a video piece that NBC used on challenge coins suffered by spouting legend from these articles instead of just avoiding misinformation.
If you feel this is inaccurate please let us know. We are all ears to see proof about the history and why we should publish an article on this subject. We want people to know it’s not because we don’t want to serve up a great read, but rather we never publish the history because one true history doesn’t exist.
