Display Those Medals!

When I returned to swimming competition (a few years ago now), one of the new experiences was occasionally winning a medal. I found the medals very fun to have and very motivational for me. After I had a few of them, I had to figure out where and how I was going to keep them. I asked a few athlete friends how they were keeping or displaying their medals, and I got various responses: “mine are in my sock drawer,” “I have them in a shoe box,” and “I have mine hanging on the office doorknob.”

These solutions all seemed a little lame to me; I did an on-line search and found a wall-mounted, metal, laser-cut, medal hanger for around $100, and decided to purchase that. It is nice. It has a laser-cut motivational slogan rising above laser-cut bars to hold the medals. I mounted the hanger on a board and mounted the board on the wall in my office: a nice solution for displaying my swim medals, but a bit expensive and taking up a good bit of wall real estate.

Then I started running as cross-training for my swimming which led to trying my first half-marathon. Then I got a bike and did my first triathlon. I love doing these events nearly as much as I do swimming, and each of these comes with a nice finisher’s medal. My medal rack was filling quickly, and I needed to get another one (yes, another $100 or so). I put the swimming medals on one display hanger, and the running and triathlon medals on the other.

This has been my display solution for a few years, but recently both displays were again becoming over-crowded. I was feeling the need for more display space – as I do not plan to stop competing any time soon – and I like being able to have all my medals where I can see them and remember all those very fun events.

I needed a new display solution.

I wanted my new display solution to be compact and inexpensive, and to display the medals nicely. My existing display racks showed my medals nicely, but they were quite expensive and took up a lot of wall space. I started looking at various options, but nothing I found was really inspiring me. Then one day, I needed to buy some fabric for a project. While at the fabric store, I discovered spool racks. These are wood frames with pegs that hold multiple spools of thread. They cost under $15! I thought perhaps I could adapt these to become medal displays. They work wonderfully!

The 30-spool rack works great for swimming medals. The 33-spool rack has the rows of pegs offset from each other and is a good choice for larger running medals.

The spool racks have fold-out legs for standing them on a table. To adapt the unit for a medal display, one simply needs to collapse the legs and add picture-hanging hardware and picture-hanging wire to the rear of the rack. These can be left in their natural wood finish, but I like to spray-paint mine black.

On the left is the picture-hanger wire, installed on the rear of the painted medal rack and, on the right, the empty medal rack hanging on the wall.

When the rack is hung on the wall, the pegs protrude at an upward angle – perfect for hanging medals. There are multiple rows of pegs, so it is recommended to load medals onto the display by starting at the bottom and working one’s way to the top. One or two medals may be hung on each peg. Layering the rows of medals this way creates a nice 3-D presentation with every medal showing.