Inexpensive Trophies

[davekelly]

At our Pack races, we try to award nice trophies, but nothing way too fancy. We are looking to find a way to cut the costs of these a bit. Living in a small town in West Texas, there are not a lot of trophy shops in town. Does anyone know of anyone on the internet that sells pinewood derby type trophies that won't cost us an arm and a leg? I've also attempted to locate anyone that sells just the components to make trophies, we have enough involved parents that bolting them together would not be a problem. Any leads?

Thanks!

Dave

[gpraceman]

At our Pack races, we try to award nice trophies, but nothing way too fancy. We are looking to find a way to cut the costs of these a bit. Living in a small town in West Texas, there are not a lot of trophy shops in town. Does anyone know of anyone on the internet that sells pinewood derby type trophies that won't cost us an arm and a leg? I've also attempted to locate anyone that sells just the components to make trophies, we have enough involved parents that bolting them together would not be a problem. Any leads?

Thanks!

Dave

If there is an Awana club nearby that is willing, you can order trophies through them. They are pretty decent trophies and are low cost ($13.95 for a set of 3), you would just need to get some brass plates engraved to put on them. You can see them at http://awana.org/Store/qryStoreList.asp ... 2&Catalog=. These are far cheaper than other trophies that I have seen, especially those available through the BSA. We used these for our last pack race and they worked out well.

[Mike Parrish]

I almost always buy ours off of e-bay. There are 3 very good trophy makers selling. I have used all three of them and have been pleased with quality and delivery.

[gpraceman]

I almost always buy ours off of e-bay. There are 3 very good trophy makers selling. I have used all three of them and have been pleased with quality and delivery.

eBay is a good possibility. However, it is good to check the buyer feedback for a seller and their return policy to see if you should do business with them. I pay close attention to the negative and neutral feedback to see if there are communication problems with the seller and how the seller responds to a problem. A good seller will do what they can to rectify a problem. I have bought several things off of eBay this summer and am overall pleased, but have had a few things that arrived broken.

[Mike Parrish]

...it is good to check the buyer feedback for a seller and their return policy to see if you should do business with them. I pay close attention to the negative and neutral feedback to see if there are communication problems with the seller and how the seller responds to a problem. A good seller will do what they can to rectify a problem.

Good advice Randy.

[Darin McGrew]

At our Pack races, we try to award nice trophies, but nothing way too fancy. We are looking to find a way to cut the costs of these a bit.

Stan's web site has a page about Pinewood Derby Plaques that can be made inexpensively by "one of your 'crafty' parents" (as Stan puts it).

[DMWOOD]

I got trophies from this place last year. The ones I got were cheap plastic but they looked good. I had one broken piece in the shipment but they sent me a new one right away. I will use them again this year.

http://www.aaatrophies.com/derby.php

[PinewoodPerformance]

http://www.aaatrophies.com/derby.php

That is the same place I am using for Districts! If you look around the site more you can find a larger variety of trophies in Bigger sizes.

[davekelly]

Thanks for all the info. I've seen several listings for trophies on ebay and I'm sure the number will rise as the racing season gets closer. Also aaatrophies.com is a great site. Of course the question now becomes, save money or get bigger/more trophies!

Dave

[Da Graphite Kid]

Dave,

I've got a few that haven't been mentioned. I don't know price wise so you will have to check that yourself:

Certificates Unlimited http://www.ja-bu-s.com/

Chief Neckerchief http://www.chiefneckerchief.com/

CrownAwards.com http://www.crownawards.com/

Dinn Brothers Trophies http://store.dinntrophy.com/store/general

Eastern Emblem Mfg. Corp. http://easternemblem.com/

riherds.com http://riherds.com/


All of these may not sell trophies but I've listed them because they also sell other awards that you can use. We've given out medallions in place of trophies for two of the years that I've been with our Pack. The boys loved them! One said it was "neater" because he could wear it around to show off - a trophy would have went up on a shelf where he wouldn't be able to show it to his friends. I've also listed Chief Neckerchief as I've heard of many giving these as awards as well.

I hope this has helped, sorry for not posting sooner but we are getting our Scouting Year all planned out (late start this year) and I've been busy.

Da Graphite Kid

[davekelly]

Wow! Thanks for all the info. Our Pack Leader and I will go through the various websites over the next few months and figure out what we want to do. With the Olympics, perhaps the medals would be a cool idea. We'll figure it out - at least we are starting the process early enough in the year.

More importantly, I do appreciate all the responses to my posts. It confirms what I've always thought of this site and those that are active on it - real class!

Dave

[Darin McGrew]

At our Pack races, we try to award nice trophies, but nothing way too fancy. We are looking to find a way to cut the costs of these a bit.

For our monthly gimmick car rallyes, The Rallye Club presents 1" diameter pins from Little Awards. Each pin can have a unique design, and costs only $1.50. We use a different basic design for each rallye, and change the place (1st, 2nd, or 3rd) and the class (First Timer through Master Expert) for each pin. We order two copies of each pin (one for the driver and one for the navigator), and also order pins for the rallyemaster, the checkpoint workers, etc. For each rallye, we end up getting about 40 pins for about $60.

The more experienced rallyists like them, because they're small and a group of pins can be displayed more easily than a similar sized group of plaques or trophies. On the other hand, we've heard that some newer rallyists are put off by receiving a only 2 small pins when they finally win, so we may start using more substantial awards, at least for the First Timers and Beginners.

[Sylvar]

If you are looking for something inexpensive to do for the whole pack, the plaques on Stan's site are great. The parents really appreciated it when I made them last year. I made 45 of them for around $20. I made a few modifications from Stan's design.

First, Rather than silkscreening which I didn't have the equipment for. I printed the design on colored paper and decoupaged it onto the plaque. This worked WAAAAY better than I thought it would when I first thought of it. I allowed me to do a background design as well. Note: If you try this method learn from my mistakes: Soak the paper in water for a few second before you glue it down. After I figured this trick out had NO bubbles in the finished product. Also, don't fret over small bubbles. They will go away as the glue dries




Secondly, Instead of mounting the shelf directly to the plaque I used 8 penny nails to create a "floating" shelf. This was done because I was worried that my own sons car, with the COM so far back, would not be able to stay on the normal shelf. This design allows the wheels to straddle the shelf allowing for a more stable display.



Third, I drilled a 7/8" hole angled upward in the back for a mounting bracket. This kept me from having to buy the bracket hardware, thus saving me about $15 on the project ( the only place I found the brackets I wanted locally they were 35 cents apiece and they didn't have enough)




Also in this pic you can see that the holes that were drilled for the nail holes were counter sunk. I set up some jigs for each process and all the holes were drilled quite quickly. All that had to be done for assembly was glue the nails into their holes then glue the shelf onto the nails. BTW the Shelf is 1 1/4" Baseboard trim that I have a ton of. The Stuff is cheap, and it makes for a very nice looking display.

Shane

[Stan Pope]

Nice adaptations, Shane!

On the hanging bracket... think I said that I drill a slanted hole, also, but only about 1/4" in diameter.

The L-shaped car mounting bracket is offset to allow a car with just about any sensible CM location to be mounted. My cars don't tilt it!

Since you made so many, did you make the fixtures as well? They take most of the pain out of the second year. THe bracket holding fixture makes it a project that youngsters (e.g. Webelos) can do with little risk to fingers. On the other hand, you bracket approach reduces the overall complexity.

Stan

[Sylvar]

Thanks Stan!
Yes, I made Jigs to help me line up all the holes. Manufacturing the plaques (just making them, not painting and putting the design on) only took one evening. I set up everything I would need, Jigs, router fence,etc while I was doing the proto-type. My wife and I set up an assembly line and knocked them all out after we got home from work the next day. I cut out the plaques, she routed them. We had 2 drill presses going, so one could drill the mounting hole and the next could drill the holes for the nails. Those holes had to be drilled twice. Once from the front, then counter sunk from behind. This kept the MDF from flaking out as the drill bit pushed through leaving me with very little clean-up to do before we painted.

The L-shaped car mounting bracket is offset to allow a car with just about any sensible CM location to be mounted.

Well, that was just it. At the time I started making these My sons car did not have a sensible CM. We figured this out when we did our test runs in the track and corrected, but at the time the CM was probably only 5/8" in front of the rear axle.

Thanks Again!

Shane