<p>Multiple kids, years of soccer and swim participation trophies. What do you do with them? I am ready to throw them out, but am wondering if there is a way to re-use or recycle such things?</p>
<p>There are groups that take old trophies and relabel them. Google it for your area.</p>
<p>Want ours? These were oh-so-important, but those trophies - especially those “participation trophies” are such dust collectors now. I snuck in my son’s room and took them out. They’re hidden away and ready for goodwill if he doesn’t notice.</p>
<p>I pulled the inscription plates off (kept them just in case kid might want to look through them in their old age) and donated them to Salvation Army who said they used them for their sports programs for kids.</p>
<p>I was wondering the same thing. I would love to get rid of these dust collectors. We actually gave some of them back to our HS theatre dept. Just took the name plate off and the dept can reuse them.</p>
<p>We through most of them out a few months ago–boxes and boxes of them.</p>
<p>I took pictures of each and everyone of them and then donated ALL to Good Will</p>
<p>You keep them a few years until no one has any interest, then you throw them away. Give them to charity if it makes you feel better, but they are going to the trash anyway.</p>
<p>What about old MEDALS…you can’t take a “plate” off of them. The medals are engraved. We have THREE boxes of them in our attic…DH’s.</p>
<p>I hope someone posts a link to this thread when next year’s “high school awards night” thread rolls around. :D</p>
<p>If there are a few special ones the kids would like to keep, you can unscrew the top part from the base and turn the base into a candle holder pretty easily - I ordered some (hurricane?) glass candle holders from a home party catalog (party-light?) and the pretty colored glass tops come right out of their glass bases, though I did have to use a drill to make the holes on the trophy base a little bigger.</p>
<p>I’ve also used the bases, stacked, to make the “legs” on a wall shelf for one of my sons - a very long bolt/threaded rod and nut holds the whole thing together nicely after they’re glued (again, used drill to go all the way through the bases)! D’s skating medals are going to frame a mirror when I get around to it (I’ve done it with broken pottery, so hopefully will work with metal and I’ll use a few other things as well) - ends up kind of folk art looking, but these were big competitions so she doesn’t want to part with them. Haven’t found a use for the tops of trophies yet though!</p>
<p>Or donate them to the youth organizations like Little League, Pop Warner, etc…</p>
<p>You may be able to offer them on freecycle or craigslist. I posted mine on freecycle and had many requesters.</p>
<p>BTW, my kid’s karate school recycles trophies. They are so gosh darned expensive so to reduce the expense for the parents, the adults who get trophies often donate their trophies back to the school. When there are enough donated trophies, they host an event and hand them out to the kids who win each competition. Everyone leaves happy.</p>
<p>I’ve trashed most of them. I had no idea they could be “recycled”. I think I saved one or two that were from chamionship games but all the “participation” trophies are gone.
I asked the boys first. They didn’t care.</p>
<p>Instead of youth sport leagues and teams giving out trophies and ribbons to kids, I always thought kids would have appreciated getting something they would really like instead–candy bars!</p>
<p>After I left college, I suggested to my parents that they try to donate them. They called around many organizations but couldn’t find anyone to accept them.</p>
<p>A relative received a plaque from a community college thanking her for her financial support. After her death, I contacted the dept that gave out the plaque (thinking that reusing it would reduce their expenses and mean more money directly going the school), and they never returned my phone call.</p>
<p>Unfortuantely, I don’t think there is a huge market for recycled trophies. </p>
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<p>I enjoy the ribbons I got as a kid, but they are easy to box up and store. Trophies are really useless and collect a whole lot of dust. Considering how expensive they are, I think what you are saying is spot on.</p>
<p>Take 1:
When I was in Jewish religious school (back in the stone age), they gave academic trophies. I garnered quite a few from 4th grade through 10th grade. They are now displayed on my dining room built-in hutch.</p>
<p>Take 2:
My sons (now in their 20’s) had a much-beloved baby sitter who re-worked two baseball trophies he had. One for each of them for completing his ‘camp’. They too are in our dining room. </p>
<p>We don’t have boxes of trophies and ribbons, but the ones we have are meaningful.</p>
<p>I like that candy bar idea! When I was on the swim team board we gave “participation trophies”. I never really liked that, but had we not done it we would have taken much grief from the parents. At the end of the season there were always a dozen or so unclaimed trophies. We took the nameplates off and recycled for the next year.</p>
<p>My son delivered his trophies HS senior year to our local Boys and Girls Club. Another company exchanged the nameplates pro bono.</p>
<p>Does it mean I’m a bad parent if my kids have ZERO trophies? My son does have two woodworking plaques from his camp, and both kids have their canoe paddles.</p>
<p>“Does it mean I’m a bad parent if my kids have ZERO trophies?” - No. It means your kids didn’t play endless seasons of soccer… or the teams didn’t have the tradition of awarding trophies to every player every season (without realizing they’d add up!)</p>