The tradition of military challenge coins is known to members of each branch of the American armed forces — Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, as well as the Coast Guard and the National Air Guard. Units within each of the branches create their own special tokens representing their members and their experiences during service.

There are varying tales about when it all started. Some say that the tradition of police challenge coins began as far back as the Roman Empire. Others credit a young fighter pilot from the First World War as having minted the first challenge coins for his fellow squadron members.

Spending a career in the military it become easy to see why challenge coins are important. Coins can show a career through deployments in Afghanistan, or recognition for excellence, and finally capture a time that member served in a location. Military coins were the first area challenge coins were made for. The Armed forces have the most coins than any other sector of coin collectibles with the Army being the branch with the most coins because of how large it is.

Military challenge coins are becoming larger than life and opening the doors for more buying, selling, and trading. With the ever growing cost of buying and collecting challenge coins people are turning to producing their own coins to supplement the cost. Many people are becoming interested in challenge coins because of the increased amount of information and activities added to the hobby on the internet. There is little need to talk about what a challenge coin is as there is a plethera of information all over the internet so we will skip that part.

Challenge coins are unique, they are wonderful to collect, and yes there is a lot of articles about them on the internet. How do you sift through the endless amounts of articles that you don’t want to read? The simple answer is to go straight to a website that is about challenge coins, for example U.S. Challenge Coins has a complete section of just articles about coins plus many other features.