The topic of military challenge coins came up in a post in the Politics and Religion Forum, a couple of Pelicans wanted to see some of the coins in my modest collection (I have about 100, I know guys with over 500!)
Here is a link from WikiPedia giving a brief history of the Military Challenge Coin.
Challenge coin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I've taken front and back photos of a few of the coins in my collection and provided a brief commentary.
I look forward to seeing other Pelican Coins . . .
First we will start out with Presidential Coins
To the left is the coin President George W. Bush gave out while he was President
and to the right is a coin which was sold at President Obama's inauguration.
Unfortunately I was NOT coined by either Commander-In-Chief, that indeed is an honor to the highest degree.
I had a friend who was an Air Force Security Officer assigned to Air Force One whenever it was at Andrews AFB. President Bush had coined my friend a few times and my friend and gave me this coin.
The second coin was sold during President Obama's inauguration as a souvenir.
As you will see the coins come in different round sizes. 1 1/2 inch, 1 3/4 inch, 1 7/8 inch, and 2 inch are the most common round sizes but you will see that they do come in different shapes . I particularly like the next two coins but I could be biased as an Air Force Dentist. Note on the first coin it appears to have teeth marks in it and the second coin obviously looks like a tooth.
As I post these photos I am realizing that these coins are as good as photographs in helping me remember my military career. I LOVE the coin to the left. It was given to me by a working dog handler in the UAE while I was deployed during Operation IRAQI FREEDOM. While I was deployed my pet German Shepard of 14 years was put to sleep (on my birthday of all days!). The dog handler would let me spend some time with his amazing working dog whenever I passed through his duty station, one day he coined me and said "Sir, Gina (the dog) wanted me to give you this." Of course the inscription "In Dogs We Trust, With Paws we Bust" is one of the best military slogans I've ever heard. The second coin was given to me by an inspector general during a unit inspection, for some reason or another.
The next set of coins are from two different Operations, the first, Operation AEROSAFE, was the National Guard response to 9-11. Remember the National Guard troops which were stationed at the various airports? I received the Operation AEROSAFE coin from the Noncommissioned officer in charge of the mission. The second coin is from Operation JUMPSTART, the California National Guard Mission to the California-Mexico Boarder (2007). Steel Castle were the guys actually building the border fence, I received this coin from the Chief assigned to the mission. If you notice this coin is numbered, indicating that this coin was given to only a few select people.
And Finally
I had a friend who was in Baghdad when Sadaam Hussein was captured. This coin was minted to commemorate his capture. On the coin it says "We Bagged your Big Bagh Daddy." The second coin was given to me by Colonel Nancy Sumner who was the medical commander of Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. This coin means a lot to me because so many of my friends have served there . . . a few never made it back.
If after all of this you guys are interested I'll be glad to post some more . . .