Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department
COINS FOR
METRO
Metro is the largest police department in Nevada and it does not order coins as one organisation. Area commands, specialist units, details and academy classes all run their own traditions, and almost every coin we make for the department is for a group of a few dozen people rather than for the whole of it.
UNIT COINS, WHICH IS ALMOST ALL OF THEM
The department coin is the formal one — the seal, the full name, the piece handed over at an official function. It is not what most people are looking for. The coins that get carried are the unit ones, and they are ordered by the unit, paid for by the unit, and designed to mean something to about forty people.
SWAT coins run tactical and dark: black nickel or antique bronze rather than polished silver, heavier stock, and imagery that leans on the team rather than the department. K-9 coins almost always carry the dog, and often a specific dog, which is a portrait problem more than a coin problem — a shepherd's head in flat enamel loses everything that makes it recognisable, so this is the case where sculpted 3D relief earns its extra mold cost.
Search and Rescue is its own tradition again, usually terrain and aviation imagery rather than a badge, because the work is about where it happens. Detective bureau coins tend to be the highest finish of any of them — hard enamel, dual plating, larger diameter.
ACADEMY CLASS COINS
A class coin is the first coin most officers own, and the class number and graduation date are the entire point of it. That puts more weight on proofreading than on design: a beautiful coin with the wrong class number is scrap, and the mold has already been cut by the time anyone notices.
We proof front and back at print size with every element called out, and nothing is struck until it is approved in writing. For a class coin we would rather have two people check the number than one.
RECOGNITION AND CITIZEN AWARDS
Award coins are a different object. They are handed to one person at a time, they are usually larger — 2.25 inches and up — and they are far more likely to end up in a frame than a pocket. That justifies finishes that would be wasteful on a carry coin: dual plating, hard enamel, a presentation box rather than a poly bag.
The design traditions are covered in more depth on the police challenge coins page. This one is about ordering them here.
GETTING THEM
Every Metro address is inside the delivery radius, so coins are brought to you rather than shipped — here is how that works. Start a design in the designer or send the spec through the quote form.
Asked and answered
What people here ask first
- Can you do a coin for a single squad or detail rather than the whole department?
- That is most of the police work we do. Department-wide coins are ordered rarely and in large numbers; squad, detail and unit coins are ordered constantly and in small ones. Twenty-five is a real order. The fixed costs — tooling, freight — sit heaviest on a run that size, so we show the price at several quantities rather than one.
- Is a shield or a badge shape more expensive than a round coin?
- No. A custom outline costs the same as a circle, because the die has to be cut either way. The reason to choose one is that a shield or a six-point star reads as law enforcement from across a room in a way a round coin does not.
- How do you handle a memorial coin?
- Carefully, and slower than a normal order. Memorial pieces carry a name and a date and there is no acceptable margin for error on either, so we proof them twice and we ask for written confirmation of the spelling and the dates from whoever is responsible, not from whoever placed the order. If you are working to a service date, tell us before anything else.
- Can we get them before an academy class graduates?
- Usually, if the conversation starts when the class does rather than the month before graduation. Production is about two to three weeks after proof approval, and academy coins carry a class number and a date that has to be right, so the artwork stage is not the place to rush. A graduation date is exactly the kind of fixed deadline to put on the quote form first.
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.
- 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.
- Conventions & trade shows
Booth coins for a show with a fixed date. The deadline is the whole job, and delivery to your hotel or the convention centre is the reason it works.
Ordering inside the valley? We deliver locally — no carrier, no tracking number, no waiting on a truck.