DisplayGifts Challenge Coin Display Review: Coins Off the Shelf and On Show

Ray kept twenty-six challenge coins in a cigar box on the top shelf of his closet, behind a shoebox, where nobody ever saw them. He is my brother, seventy-four years old, Navy from 1970 to 1974, and not a man who announces what he has. So the coins stayed in the box and the box stayed in the closet, and I would not have known they existed if he had not gone digging for a fuse one afternoon in February. A few weeks later I ordered the DisplayGifts Military Challenge Coin Display, the seven tier rack, and hung it on the wall of his den on a Saturday in March. Eight months on, those coins are the first thing you see walking into that room, and Ray has started pulling one down to tell you where it came from.

Here is what the thing actually is, because the listing photos flatter it. The DisplayGifts rack is wall mounted, seventeen and a half inches high, fourteen inches wide and one and three quarter inches deep. Seven rows of shelves, with grooves cut into each shelf so the coins stand upright. There is no door on it, no lid, no glass front. Coins sit out in the open air. That is the whole idea and it is also the one honest drawback I will get to. I ordered it myself, with my own money, the first week of March, in the same order as a flag case and a cap and a couple of other things for people at the post. It has been on Ray's wall since, and nothing about it has broken or needed replacing.

How I've Used It

I should be plain about who is writing this. I never served. I was the right age at the wrong time and the draft ended before it mattered for me, and I have never once put on a cap that said anything about a branch. Ray served. Dale and Hank at the Thursday table served. I am the brother who shops, drives, and hangs things, and that is the only standing I have to review a coin rack. What I can tell you is what got bought, how it went up, and what has happened to it since, because I was there for all of it.

The install took about half an hour on a Saturday morning. The metal brackets were already on the back of the rack when it came out of the box, and the hardware was in the box, so there was nothing to assemble. I ran a stud finder across the den wall, found a stud, marked two holes, drilled, and set it. I could have used a heavy anchor into plain drywall and it would probably have held, but the rack is about 2.1 kg empty before you load coins into it, and I did not want to be the man who put a hole in his brother's wall and then watched it lean. If you are hanging this for someone, find a stud. It is ten extra minutes and it ends the conversation.

The night it arrived, Ray took the whole thing apart at his kitchen table, meaning he dumped the cigar box out and started sorting. He did it by ship first, then by year, and it took him most of an evening. Twenty-six coins across seven rows turned out to leave a lot of open space. He has two small medals on one shelf near the bottom, which the listing says the shelves are meant to take alongside coins, and they sit fine. What struck me is that he knew where every single one of them came from without looking anything up. He had just never had a reason to say it out loud before there was a wall involved.

What Eight Months on the Wall Has Changed

The coins get seen now, which sounds small and is not. Ray's den is where he sits and where people get walked into when they come over. Dale and Hank have both stood in front of that rack and found their own coins on it, and the conversation that follows is not a conversation I would have gotten out of a cigar box in a closet. When Marge came by in the spring with a pan of bars, she stopped in the doorway and looked at it for a while. Nobody said anything dramatic. It was just there, and it did the work.

Nothing has loosened. I want to say that carefully because eight months is not a lifetime. But the shelves have not sagged under the weight of the coins, the grooves still hold each coin upright, and the rack has not pulled away from the wall or gone crooked. The manufacturer warranty is six months, which has now run out, and I have not needed it. If something goes wrong down the road, it will not be covered.

The other change is smaller and I only noticed it around midsummer. Ray handles the coins more than he used to. Not constantly, but when he is telling a story about a ship or a port, he will reach up and take the coin down and put it back. When they were in a box, getting one out meant going into a closet and moving a shoebox. It is a different thing to have it at eye level on a wall.

The Seven Rows, and What Actually Fits

The measurements matter more than they sound like they do, so here they are exactly as the listing gives them. The rack is 17.5 inches high, 14 inches wide and 1.75 inches deep on the outside. There are seven rows. The top row and the bottom row have 2.25 inches of clearance, and every row in between has 2 inches. The grooves on each shelf are what keep a coin standing instead of sliding down flat, and that detail is the difference between a display and a pile.

Standard challenge coins sit in those rows with room to spare, and going by the title the thing also takes poker chips, though Ray does not collect them so I cannot vouch for the fit from watching. The two small medals went on a shelf without trouble. What will not work is anything tall or oversized. A coin thicker than a normal one, or a medallion on a ribbon that stands up more than two inches, is going to fight the row above it. If the person you are buying for has a specific oversize piece he wants front and center, measure it first. Most collections are ordinary coins and this will be fine.

The one physical thing to know before you buy is that this is a wall piece and only a wall piece. It does not stand on a table or a shelf. It goes on a wall or it goes back in the box. If the person you are buying for rents, or moves a lot, or has a den with nothing but plaster, think about where it is going before you order it.

The Dust Question, and the Other Honest Gripes

The coins are out in the open, so they collect dust. That is not a defect, it is what an open display is, but you should know it going in. Roughly once a month Ray takes a soft dry cloth and goes along the rows. It takes him five minutes. The grooves themselves collect a little grit in the corners and need a finger run along them now and then. If the man you are buying for is the type who would find that irritating rather than restful, buy him a case with a door instead and accept that he will open it less often.

My other gripe is the spacing. Two inches is right for a standard coin and wrong for the occasional odd piece, and there is no adjusting it. You cannot move a shelf up a notch. So the collection gets sorted around the fixed rows, and one tall piece either goes on the top or bottom row where there is an extra quarter inch, or it does not go in at all. Ray had one coin that ended up on the bottom row for exactly this reason. It is a small thing and it has not ruined anything, but a buyer should not be surprised by it.

Why Not a Cabinet, or a Shelf, or the Cigar Box

The alternative Ray actually had was the cigar box, and the cigar box was free and did nothing. Somebody could also clear a shelf and stand the coins in a line, which costs nothing and looks like clutter within a week because coins roll and fall over. The third option is a proper wall cabinet with a glass door, and I have never owned one. I have looked at them the way you look at anything you might buy, and from the listings they cost more, weigh more, and hide the coins behind glass with a latch in the way. If dust is the thing that bothers you most, a cabinet is the honest answer and I would not talk you out of it.

What this rack has going for it against all three is that it is at eye level, open, and already hung. Ray does not have to unlock anything to show you a coin. That is worth more than it sounds like it is worth, especially for a man who does not volunteer stories on his own. The DisplayGifts rack lowered the effort of showing someone, and the coins came out of the closet as a result.

It took one Saturday morning and about half an hour to hang, and one evening at his kitchen table for Ray to sort twenty-six coins by ship and by year. Those are the only two numbers that matter here.

Who This Is For

This is for a veteran with a drawer, a box or a closet shelf full of coins and no way to look at them. It is for the wife or the daughter or the grandson who has seen the box and does not know what to do about it, and for the man himself if he is the type who will not buy a display for his own coins because it feels like showing off. It is also a sensible buy if you are putting together a wall that already has a flag case on it, since the listing notes the two are meant to sit near each other, and Ray's den now has his father's old burial flag case a few feet to the left of this rack. The two pieces look like they belong in the same room, which is more than I expected.

Who Should Skip It

Skip it if the collection includes tall or odd shaped pieces that need a shelf you can move, because these rows are fixed. Skip it if dust is going to drive the owner of the coins to distraction, since there is no door and there never will be. Skip it if there is no wall in the room where the coins live, or if the wall is plaster and nobody wants to find a stud. And skip it if the man you are buying for has never once mentioned his coins. This is a gift for someone who already has the collection and needs a place for it, not a way to start one.