The Trophy Poll

[Bruce Brakel]

In text you could also indicate your favorite.  I'm letting you vote five times so you can vote once for each pair of answers.  I think this means you can select five answers all in one response but I've not used this option on this board.

[Bruce Brakel]

I have not voted yet.  If we do dyed discs, most likely they would be Discraft custom stamped stuff.  I like dyed discs because then it is a trophy and a disc both.  The trophy bag tag idea, if it is new to you, would be a leather bag tag with tournament and place information on it. 

[MDR_3000]

My favorite trophies were the ones from Lumberjack Open, DSM Challenge, and Brent Hambrick.  The ones at DGLO were real nice too.

Lumberjack Open was a foot long wood cut out of Michgan with info burned into it.

DSM were custom made wood trophies, I'll take a pic of it if someone wants to see it.

Hambrick was an etched glass trophy.  (Probably my favorite type)

DGLO was, actually I'm not sure what the hell it was. Looked pretty sweet though.

[Bruce Brakel]

I like cool expensive trophies for big, expensive tournaments that have plenty of am side profit so that the cool expensive trophies don't eat up the payout.  The DGLO Lighthouses are way cool.  As soon as we don't schedule against a DGLO, maybe 2007, Kelsey and I will try to get ourselves one of those. 

[MDR_3000]

I wonder how expensive it would be to do trophies like they had at Homies. The discs made of wood...  I thought those were pretty sweet.

[Bruce Brakel]

I've looked into those.  The manufacturer advertises in DGWN.  Kira [the page 3 girl for the current DGWN] won the one they had for Intermediate Women at the Homie.  They are cool.  I think they would more than double our current trophy costs. 

[Dan Michler]

i would prefer dyed discs to the mini markers

[Jon Brakel]

I wonder how expensive it would be to do trophies like they had at Homies. The discs made of wood...  I thought those were pretty sweet.

Generally cool commercially made trophies are in the $50 and up range. You can find some ok looking stuff in the $35 and up range. Bad looking commercial trophies are usually in the $30 and less range. The gold plastic ultimate guy on top of the pedastal crap trophy (that some disc golf tournaments have used) is around $20. We are paying less than $10 for the mini marker basket trophy that Kira makes.

We can't afford to do really cool wood trophies at the IOS without taking away all of the CTPs and half the payout...at least not at the entry fees that we charge. The higher the entry fee, even if there is a higher corresponding payout, the higher the tournament profit which allows the big expensive tournaments to do big expensive amenaties like cool trophies and lunch.

If someone were to find a trophy sponsor or if someone works at a trophy shop and can set us up with some kind of insider's deal, then we could offer something cool and commercial.

[whofarted]

how much of a difference is there in cost and time consumption between the quarter toss baskets and the mini plauques?

[Bruce Brakel]

The quarter toss baskets are within the price range we want to stay within but I was not taking anything for labor for those last year.  If I could find a cheap source for actuator discs they would be a lot cheaper because I have to buy the expensive brass hardware with the cheap rubber disc.  A quarter toss basket takes about as long to make as a mini marker mini basket trophy.  I think the quarter toss baskets are a little easier to make. Bending the wire for the mini marker trophies is painstaking and it gets painful after awhile. 

[whofarted]

personally i like the quarter toss baskets the best out of the trophies and plaques that i have seen.  if the price is right i would make all the trophies like those.

[CEValkyrie]

This will give somone a real good idea how fast trophy expenses add up in a hurry. The only one on this page I liked was the 7" acrylic triangle. At the IOS you're looking at approximately 15-20 trophies per weekend.
http://www.quicktrophy.com/sports/index.php?sport_id=54&other=1&linkcode=ov530

http://www.discgolftrophies.com/page2.html

[Bruce Brakel]

Exactly.  A $15 trophy times 18 trophies equals $270 which equals about 540 Brass.  Every extra dollar spent on trophies is 2 Brass deducted from CTPs.  It is the cheap trophies we do that pay for the CTPs that we do. 

[Mike S]

To be honest I would rather have no trophy at all than have something that looks cheesy.  I appreciate the effort but I didnt really like the IOS trophies.  If it isnt something I would show off, then I'd rather just have the cash added to the prize pool.  Of course, I would have to place high enough to get a trophy first.  I think I only won like 4 trophies this year and they were all corny as hell.  My bronze bulldog head for winning the Streamwood league putting competition is hilarious.

[CEValkyrie]

Are there any of you out there that are woodworkers? Michler, not that kind of wood!

[damonshort]

To be honest I would rather have no trophy at all than have something that looks cheesy.  I appreciate the effort but I didnt really like the IOS trophies.

I like them, the funkiness of them is part of the attraction. (I managed to win one of the mini-markers last year.) Those manufactured ones of the forehand thrower are pretty goofy though (I managed to win one of those too a few years ago...).

The acrylic triangle that Brett mentioned, and those on the VA dg site are really nice, but ridiculously expensive. Maybe for the tour winners they'd be nice though.

[maa4208]

Are there any of you out there that are woodworkers? Michler, not that kind of wood!

My dad made some basket trophys for the Winter Doubles League in the Joliet Area. Maybe he can post the pics...

[Bruce Brakel]

i would prefer dyed discs to the mini markers

That was the correct answer!  Unfortunately they don't make an X-Rattler. 

Dyed disc trophies are under way and I'll be posting some pictures of ones that are representative of the rest in the next couple of days.  IOS #1 trophies will be a lot like the Big Paw trophies, which Terry Miller says is the best cheap trophy he ever won in his entire life.  They will have a blob in the middle shaped something like the State of Wisconsin as interpreted by a unicyle riding ballet dancer who studies wood carving under the tutelage of a Thai master between community theatre rehearsals and disc golf outings.  So she was a little too busy to cut all those tiny islands.  The blob will be dyed on some and undyed on some and the lettering will be like the Big Paw lettering, undyed but somehow hand written.  Jon is in charge of giving out the dying secrets. 

Doing dyed Discraft trophy discs was part of our overall deal with Discraft, and it was the number one response on the poll, and that part of the deal nets us the free stuff for the Throw Discraft CTP and the Discraft Big Brass Bonus, so that all works well together.  It is also part of the deal that I leave the Discraft rim stamps on the discs, rather than using the secret technigue to make them go away, which Jon will probably disclose if you ask him. 

For IOS #1 the trophies will be a random mix of X-Wasps and X-Challengers, plus a Crush, a Storm and two XSes.  For IOS#2 I'll have our custom IOS stuff and then I can do anything that is popular if I find out in advance.  I like X-Buzzzes, so whichever division I'm playing at each event will probably get X-Buzzzes. 

[Brian]

I have to agree with Mike.  what about doing a nice trophy for the overall top three in the divisions? 

[Bruce Brakel]

I have to agree with Mike.  what about doing a nice trophy for the overall top three in the divisions? 

Are you talking about Series Overalls or or individual tournaments? 

If you look at the poll results the one thing that is clear is that no matter what we do, a third of the players will wish we had done something else.  But doing something for trophies is overwhelmingly preferred and dyed disc trophies polled well.  Anyone who reads this message board or plays our tournaments knows what I've been doing with dyed disc trophies. 

For Series Overalls we are doing Dr Dyed trophy discs.  I'm not sure what he is going to do but I'm hoping it will be cool stuff.  For overall series first place in some divisions we might put the Dr. Dyed disc on a trophy plaque, like the original Illinois Open trophies or the Lizard Doubles trophies or any of the MDGO trophies I did those years. 

IOS #1 Intermediate Women 1st is posted in the Equipment thread where Jon and I post dyed discs.  Rec 1st is below.  If you have a good monitor these look pretty good.  If your monitor is like six years old and still going, they don't look so good.