Trade shows & conventions
BOOTH COINS,
DELIVERED TO THE SHOW
A convention coin is the one job on this site where the deadline is not a preference. The hall opens on a date that will not move, and a coin that arrives the day after is worth nothing. Being in the same city as the show is the entire reason this works.
THE DEADLINE IS THE JOB
Every other order on this site has a date that can slip by a week without much consequence. This one does not. That inverts how the job should be run: the date comes first, and it determines what is still possible in design, finish and quantity — not the other way round.
The realistic arithmetic is this. Production is about two to three weeks from proof approval. A proof takes us under 24 hours once the spec is complete. Everything else in the schedule is your side — deciding the artwork and getting it approved — and that is the part that overruns. If a show is six weeks out you have room. If it is three, the artwork needs to be settled this week.
Rush production exists and shortens the factory side at extra cost. It does not shorten the approval side, and it is not a substitute for starting on time. We will tell you which one you are actually in.
WHY LOCAL MATTERS MORE HERE THAN ANYWHERE
The failure mode for an out-of-state supplier is not a bad coin. It is a box that is in a carrier's network on the morning of load-in, with a tracking number that has not updated since Tuesday and nobody to call who can do anything about it.
We deliver to a valley address by hand, which removes that failure entirely. In practice the best destination is the team's hotel the day before load-in rather than the hall itself — convention centres have their own receiving windows and rules set by the venue and the show, and a hotel front desk has neither. How local delivery works has the detail.
WHAT A BOOTH COIN SHOULD ACTUALLY BE
A coin is an expensive giveaway and a cheap gift, and the difference is who you hand it to. Dropped in a bowl at the front of a booth it costs several dollars a head to be thrown away at the airport. Handed to someone at the end of a real conversation, it is the only thing they take home from the show that they keep.
That argues for fewer, better coins. A heavier piece with a proper finish, in a pouch rather than loose, given deliberately, beats twice as many thin ones. It also argues against putting the show year on it unless the coin is genuinely about that show — a dated coin cannot be used next year, and the mold is already paid for.
If a coin is the wrong object for your booth, patches do a similar job at a lower unit cost and travel flatter.
START WITH THE DATE
Put the show date on the quote form before anything else — it is the first thing the form asks for because it is the thing that decides everything after it. Or lay the coin out in the designer and price it as you go.
Asked and answered
What people here ask first
- Our show opens in three weeks. Is that possible?
- Possibly, and the answer depends almost entirely on how quickly the artwork settles. Production runs about two to three weeks after proof approval, and a proof comes back inside 24 hours of a complete spec. Three weeks with artwork ready is tight but real. Three weeks with the design still being argued about internally is not, and we would rather say so now than take the order.
- Can you deliver to the convention centre or our hotel?
- To a valley address, yes — that is the main reason exhibitors use a local maker. Note that convention halls have their own receiving rules and windows, and those are set by the venue and the show, not by us. In practice delivering to the team's hotel the day before load-in is more reliable than delivering to a hall, and it is what we would suggest.
- How many should we order for a booth?
- Fewer than you think if they are for qualified conversations, more than you think if they are a giveaway. A coin is a poor bowl-of-swag item — it costs several dollars each and most of them end up in a bin. It is a very good thing to hand to someone you actually spoke to. Most exhibitors we work with land between 100 and 300 for a mid-size booth.
- What happens to the mold after the show?
- It exists, and it is yours to reorder against. If the coin is dated to a specific show it has limited life; if it is a company coin with no date, next year's order skips the tooling cost entirely. That is worth deciding at the design stage rather than after, because putting the year on the coin is the decision that makes it single-use.
Elsewhere in the valley
Who else we build for here
- Nellis AFB
Squadron, wing and exercise coins for the units at Nellis — including the ones that rotate through for Red Flag and leave with something to remember it by.
- Creech AFB
Coins for the remotely piloted aircraft community, whose deployments look nothing like anyone else's and whose coins tend to say so.
- Nevada National Guard
Drill-weekend timelines, unit funds rather than corporate budgets, and coins that have to survive a deployment and a civilian job at the same time.
- Nevada, statewide
Reno, Carson City, Fallon and the rural counties. Outside the delivery radius, so everything ships — which changes the timeline, not the coin.
- Las Vegas Metro Police
Area command, SWAT, K-9, Search and Rescue and academy class coins for the largest police department in Nevada.
- Clark County Fire
Station and company coins for CCFD, Las Vegas Fire & Rescue, Henderson and North Las Vegas — where the coin belongs to the house, not the department.
- Casino & hospitality
Service anniversary, host and security team coins for the property recognition programmes that run all year on this valley's largest employers.
Ordering inside the valley? We deliver locally — no carrier, no tracking number, no waiting on a truck.