Elite Challenge Coins (an online counterpart to The Award and Frame Shop) is a supplier of high quality custom challenge coins, custom lapel pins and custom embroidered patches. We have been producing custom products for our customers since 1988!

It all began back in 1988. LTC Robert Oldmixon retired from active duty at Fort Lee, Virginia and opened a small shop in the PX there called Appomattox Gallery. In the begining the business was dedicated to picture framing and a few award plaques. In 1990 we made out first challenge coin for the Fort Lee NCO academy as well as the 240th and 54th Quartermaster company at Fort Lee.

In 1994, we opened our second store, The Award Shop in Colonial Heights, Virginia, just outside Fort Lee. In 1997 we moved to The Boulevard (US Route 1) in Colonial Heights. This location gave us around 6,000 square feet of showroom and production space. With room to grow we have branched off into many areas of business. From trophies and plaques to custom framed awards, signs, apparel and more. We grew the company and offered a wide variety of products and services to our cusotmer. .

Our company began helping our customers to design and manufacture custom military challenge coins online in 1998 with our website military-coins.com. In 2000 we created Richmond Designs as a company specifically to help our online customers. Since then we have produced thousands of unique coins for the United States military as well as many other government and civilian organizations.

It has not stopped there. Over the years we have increased our product selection to include custom lapel pins,custom embroidered patches and custom key chains. We actually make many more items than we display on our website but we decided to focus on a select few items that we can offer our online customers and add more products later on.