Awards Archives | QuickTrophy Blog

The Real Musketeers Cup

The real Musketeers Cup or La Coupe des Mousquetaires is the trophy awarded to the Men’s Singles winner of the French Open. No one will ever victory-dive into a pool with this beauty, however. The winner is granted the singular honor of gently handling the real trophy for only a few moments before returning it to protective custody.

Once a year, on the day of the final match, the original cup leaves the office of the President of the Federation for just few hours. The cup is displayed at the meet and the winner can hold it for photos, but not keep it. The winner takes only a replica home with him. But it is a beauty of a replica!

Every year silversmiths devote over a hundred hours of work to making the Musketeers Cup replica. The replica is slightly smaller than the original. Working their craft, the silversmiths transform a simple sheet of solid silver into a work of art. The metal tamers take a month in the workshop to perform this task – and create a thing of beauty.

QuickTrophy does not offer Musketeers Cup replicas for your tennis tournament, but we do offer lots of tennis trophies and many different metal cup trophies as well. Our trophy crafters transform pieces of plastic, metal, marble, and wood into things of beauty as well. They make every single trophy to order – completely custom to fit customer.

And best of all, the recipient of the trophy can take it home with them after the photo op.

Trophy Packing Secrets

By Terrence Dehring

How do we pack your order so it is not broken during the shipping process?

Over the years, with lots of trial and error, and with the help of packaging professionals, at QuickTrophy, we have developed a trophy packing system that seems to work pretty good. It is not 100% fail safe, but it works way better than anything else we’ve tried. And it is a system that is flexible, and adaptable to different sizes, shapes, and numbers of trophies and awards.

What makes packing trophies difficult in the first place, is that a trophy has an odd balance. It is has a piece of marble on the bottom, basically a rock, and the other end has a lightweight figurine. So when you lay a trophy in a box, it automatically wants to fall to one end, the end with the marble in it. This is difficulty number 1.

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The Value of a Birthday Cake

By Terrence Dehring

What is a Birthday Cake for? Why celebrate the day someone was born? When you stop to think about it, celebrating a birthday is a strange ritual. Everyone loves to celebrate birthdays and everyone loves to have a birthday no matter what your age. You feel special on your birthday, like a celebrity. It is “your” day. And everyone you know and meet acknowledges you on your special day with a “Happy Birthday!” wish. We all enjoy birthdays and joyfully participate in them. We buy personalized gifts, have a party, go out to dinner, give a birthday card, sing the birthday song, and have a cake to celebrate the fact that they are a year older. It seems like birthdays are a happy holiday.

When you stop to think about it, doesn’t it seem strange that we celebrate the day someone was born? Why make a big deal about the fact that someone is a year older? Maybe it dates back to times of higher youth mortality rates when it was a big deal just to survive – making it another year was an event worth celebrating. Maybe celebrating birthdays stem from our need to have special days throughout the year. Holidays, whether religious or civil, punctuate the year with special days, events to remember, time to share with family and friends. No matter the reason, celebrations are always welcome.

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Tips for Engraving Plaques

By Terrence Dehring

Setting up the engraving for plaques can be an intimidating task – especially if you have never done it before. But we make it easier to get great looking results at QuickTrophy. We have built in a tool that lets you select the font, the font size, and the font style for each line of text when you need help engraving plaques. If you don’t know how to start, you can use one of our plaque templates and just change the lines you want. But just by following 3 simple tips for engraving plaques, you can easily get professional looking results.

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Reusing Old Trophies

By Terrence Dehring

What can be done with old trophies? When the kids who received them have grown and moved away and somehow, unbelievably, they “forgot” to take their trophies with them. Who can blame them? They are probably living in an apartment without much extra space. But even when they do have extra space, they are likely collecting the next generation of trophies for their children. So what do you do with all the old trophies getting dusty in the rec room? It’s hard to toss them – there are too many memories attached to them. Well here are a few ideas:

Take them to the local Goodwill or St. Vincent’s store. Boy scouts and other groups looking for projects will collect the parts and make the trophies they can use for their annual events. Some dusting and new engraved plates and they will be good as new!

Use them as garden decorations. Kind of like gnomes, only more “sporty”.

Take them apart and use the components in craft projects. It’s amazing what some people can create!

Employee of the Month

By Terrence Dehring

Being named employee of the month is a great honor. It lets the employee know they are appreciated for what they do. It is a pat on the back for a job well done. It pumps up their confidence and most likely improves their performance. And by recognizing an employee for their work, it becomes a contagious event. Everyone wants to be recognized for what they do, and if, by doing a little more, or doing something a little better, they can be publicly recognized for their efforts, they will have plenty of incentive to go the extra distance.

The amazing thing is that is costs very little to recognize an employee for a job well done. The return on investment is huge. The collateral returns are immense. The positive impact it has on the culture of an organization are great. So why would any organization NOT want to recognize their star performers?

Black Star Trophies

We just introduced Black Star Trophies to the QuickTrophy lineup. They feature the same design found on our Black Star medals but the design is expanded and built into a 5″ black and gold figurine. We currently offer the Black Star Trophy design for Cheer Leading, Soccer, Softball, and Baseball. Football and Academic themes will be introduced next week. We will then expand the line based on customer demand.

The figurine is mounted on a black marble base and looks pretty sharp. The black star trophies can be found on the QuickTrophy web site under the sport (baseball, soccer, etc.) and listed within the Economy Section. The construction of these trophies makes them very affordable. They are perfect for tight budgets or for participation trophies for youth athletes. Present your sports athletes with something a little different and exciting. Check them out on our web site and let us know what you think.

Football Acrylic Awards

What is the lifespan of a trophy or award style? It seems like bobble-heads came and went during a 2-3 year period around 2005 or so. Some resin awards were impossible to keep in stock for a while and now you can’t give them away. At the same time the old standby – the figurine on a marble base – has been around for decades and is still one of the most sought after trophies. What evolutionary law of popularity determines what’s hot and what’s not and for how long?

We used to sell hundreds of simple black acrylic awards with a matching black and gold holographic decal depicting various sport themes. Shown in the picture is one of the football acrylic awards. The awards came in two sizes. Their popularity waxed and waned with the collective preferences of the coaches and team mom’s across the country. Well, rather than try to figure out the laws of pop culture, it is best to just ride the waves and know when it is time to pull the plug. Time to discount and make room for new stuff. So get the football acrylic awards while we still have them!

Bocce Ball Awards

Bocce Ball has been popular in Europe for millennia, dating back to ancient Roman Empire times. It is especially popular in Italy and around the world where people of Italian ancestry have relocated. In the United States some urban areas have bocce ball courts that are maintained and used quite heavily. In recent years it seems to have become increasingly popular among the population at large. At weekend gatherings, picnics, and family reunions, bocce ball is a popular pastime.

We have noticed an increase in the use of bocce ball awards and trophies for family events as well as larger organized tournaments. Anytime there is a recurring event, people like to commemorate it with a trophy – and what better way to commemorate a bocce ball tournament than with a perpetual trophy to keep accurate records on past winners and give future winners something to strive for!

For smaller events, like family reunions, summer picnic outings, or city leagues, smaller bocce ball awards may be more appropriate. At QuickTrophy we have a pretty nice selection of trophies. And if you don’t see something you like, just call us and maybe we can put something special together for you.

The Stormy Kromer Legend

Bob Jacquart of Jacquart Fabric Products in Ironwood, Michigan gave a presentation in Marquette recently. He recounted the history of the company he grew from a family sewing shop to an producer of clothing products distributed worldwide. The product that catapulted the company to stardom was a little hat known as the Stormy Kromer. Originally used by rail employees in the extreme upper mid-west, it has been revived and found popularity among the young outdoor enthusiasts of the world – much like Patagonia or the North Face. Production of the Stormy Kromer line of products has nearly doubled the size of the company and given the company a name with strong brand recognition. Jacquart Fabric Products is now a major employer in a geographic area that has experienced chronic high unemployment for decades – similar to QuickTrophy.

Once the mark of a manly woodsman or hunter, the Stormy Kromer is now an icon for people who love and live in the great outdoors. A well made, truly American product!