What's a Challenge Coin?

[Music] hi I'm Ryan semansky curator for Battleship New Jersey museum and Memorial and today we're on quarter deck waiting for some guests to come in and in the meantime we decided to film a

video one of those videos that we get asked about fairly constantly is to do one on the history of challenge coins and this is going to be a quick

video uh because the answer is challenge coins have no history historians use a 50-year rule to measure what is history versus what is

contemporary and challenge coins as such just haven't existed for 50 years uh you could go back to ancient times and say

how the Babylonian Kings like to put their heads on gold coins uh is a sort of challenge coin that's essentially what challenge coins are but those coins

are still traded for goods and services which which uh is not really the deal with challenge coins there are no historic challenge coins from when Battleship New Jersey was in service

this seems to be something that exists after the battleships already been decommissioned in 1991 so it it's something that has come up during my lifetime and therefore is not historic

in the ship's historic life it was very common to give away uh baseball hats out of the ship store lighters which are very similar in that there would be metal and engraved with the ship's name

but at least they had a use to them and uh patches th those sorts of souvenirs were fairly common to carry with you to buy in the ship store to trade to people

much more recently uh the like the late '90s or early 2000s I'm not exactly sure when and and I don't know that anybody's written a good history of these um but

challenge coins start to show up and I can't say exactly where they start like like I said earlier the concept certainly exists already of uh having

Souvenirs of your vessel to hand out to trade with other people so it's not too big of a step to

go to coins uh certainly in this country for going to historic sites having those coin press machines that takes a penny and crushes them into something that has

a the historic sites logo on it has been around for several decades now so somewhere from that it seems like some of these companies that manufacture

those sorts of souvenirs started coming up with the coin idea and initial ones would be similar to this one that we have from the coast Cod cutter Eagle it's got the service logo on the back

the ship on the front and it's it doesn't have any color it's just a pressed piece of metal now over time these start to get fancy with enamels on them and different colors and some of

them will even glow in the darkk or do other things like that um um but you they've been incrementally getting better originally they're all roughly the same size challenge

coins and now they come in a variety of sizes our chief petty officers uh made one one year or the chief petty officers who volunteer on board the ship and come

out for Chiefs week every year made one that is uh a watertight door it's about this big and it's actually opens and closes so it's functionally two watertight door sized they've made one

that's a cut out of a 16in gun turret um and a bunch of other cool things like that um at a certain point a challenge

coin becomes a plaque and it that line seems to be pretty uh pretty wide open so more recent ships like uh USS

balky ddg uh 84 it's a challenge coin it's got the ship's logo on one side see in color enameled then it's got in relief on one side the ship

or uh recently we went on board USS Angela mchan and her commanding officers challenge coin references the ship's motto give them the beans so their logo

is a fancy Bean with the Coast Guard uh stripe and give them the beans on the back and now things have progressed to the point where it's not just ships and

units like infantry divisions or uh Air Force squadrons have their own coins uh but often the commanding officers will have their own so for example here's a

challenge coin for the new New Jersey the submarine she does exist during the time of challenge coins she's got the Jersey devil horns but otherwise it's fairly coin-shaped

but likewise her commanding officer has a challenge coin this one's from Commander Holly uh who was her first commanding officer he has since moved on

to another assignment uh but for example her chief of the boat has his own challenge coin which is very cool but I don't have a copy here that one's at home in my challenge coin rack um and so

you start to see some ships different departments have challenge coins in a different in addition to the ship's own challenge coins and some of them you can buy vers others that you can only be

presented for example you can buy the new new jerseys challenge coin in the ship store and I think in our ship store too for that matter we we sell some of the stuff from the new New Jersey which

all goes back into the welfare and morale fund of that boat uh which means that you're not just benefiting the museum here you're also benefiting the crew of this active duty Submarine

that's associated with us but you can't buy Commander Holly's challenge coin you have to be presented that and often times challenge coins are

are uh like a $2 bill they're presented as a hey great job thanks for giving a tour of the boat or thanks for doing this thing for us when challenge coins

first started there was something of a game or uh one might even say a challenge associated

with them uh primarily if you're at a bar if somebody plunks a challenge coin down at the bar everybody else has to plunk one down as well if you don't have one to plunk down if you have not done

something for someone that they thought was good enough to give you their challenge coin then you've got to buy around of drinks for everyone and often the the competition that com out of this

is who has a challenge coin from the the highest Authority like if I've got Commander Holly's challenge coin and you have uh Secretary of the

Navy del Toro's challenge coin well then yours outranks mine you win and I have to buy the next drink or say uh I've got a battleship

New Jersey challenge coin that's a site that has a full captain in charge and you've got a mind sweeper challenge coin which would be commanded by a lieutenant

then the battleship one probably wins I think this is all those kids who grew up with pogs in the 80s getting access to metal presses I think that's what's happening

here while this Battleship did not traditionally have a challenge coin because this is something that is so frequently collected nowadays the museum has created a number of challenge coins

for the battle bhip and we have several for sale in our ship store we have traditionally had uh challenge coins for sale but we we'll have them for a couple

years and then create a new one and sell that one instead so we are at a time when we're transitioning out of the old type of challenge coins we're either very close to being out or uh are

already out and we're transitioning into this new one which is no longer coin shaped it's starting to be a small plaque so on this side you've got the uh

Illustrated colored picture of the ship fer guns really famous picture from the 80s that you can tell that we used as the the background for this it's got the

ship's 19 Battle Stars and then on this side it's got the ships four crests from various commissioning periods all the ships

ribbons and awards and uh it's all overlaid onto an American flag so this is very much our most decorated Battleship challenge coin that's looking

at our Wards and crests and that sort of stuff so uh this is larger than your standard challenge coin and for sale for a limited time in our store make sure you get

one we also have additional challenge coins for the ship's Marine Detachment and for the Entertainer Bob Hope who had a relationship with the ship and came on

board on at least two separate occasions and uh most recently and for a very limited time we have a curator's challenge coin on one side

it's got the overhead image of the ship with the guns firing animated and on the other side it has a picture that'll break your mirror

but this uh this side of the challenge coin is really cool remember you can only display one side at a time so that's pretty good and keep in mind these are only going to be around for a

limited time I could barely stomach that and all of the proceeds from these all the proceeds from the challenge coins and everything else you buy in our ship

store goes to the museum I I don't get anything for this challenge coin it all goes back into the preservation of the ship so by buying that stuff you are

supporting the museum and the ongoing restoration efforts that we're doing so if I present the curator's challenge coin at the bar the next time I see you

there do you have a challenge coin that could beat this literally any other challenge coin is a higher rank than than this uh but do you have one in your pocket that that would beat this let us know what your

highest ranking challenge coin that you have is in the comment section down below Battleship New Jersey receives operating support from the New Jersey Department of State also from a number of other businesses and private

individuals like yourselves in particular buying stuff in our ship store supports the ongoing operations of the battleship there's also a link in the description below to our store and another link where you can donate to

support the museum you can also support us by liking sharing subscribing so more people find about us and the channel thanks for watching