I Make Marathon Medals. Here Are the Five Kinds Every Race Picks From
This article was originally published on BadgeArtisans and has been republished here with permission. You can read the original version here.
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My factory has shipped more marathon medals than I can count, and the question that opens almost every email is the same: “we need a medal, can you make it?” The follow-up is where the interesting part starts — which one? Because there is not one marathon medal. There are five or six, and the race that understands that hands the right one to the right person, every single time.
The one everyone thinks of
The finisher medal is the classic — the award for finishing within the time limit, the one with the race name, the year, and the 26.2 on its face. It is the medal people cry over at the line, photograph in the sun, and keep for a decade. For a timed race this is the anchor, and it deserves the biggest slice of the budget. A runner spends six months earning it; the medal is the part of that we get to build.
The one everyone thinks is a downgrade
Then there is the participation medal, and I have watched organizers wince at the name. It is not a cheaper finisher medal. It is a different message entirely — “you showed up” instead of “you finished.” A fun run, a kids’ race, a charity mile: that is where it belongs. The Tokyo Marathon hands its Friendship Run and Family Run their own participation medals, separate from the main event. Same race, two awards, zero confusion about who earned which.
The ones only three people will ever see
Podium medals and age group medals exist for a handful of runners, and they are engineered differently than people expect. The gold is not gold. It is a zinc-alloy base finished with imitation gold plating; the silver is nickel, the bronze is copper. That is how a medal that looks like an Olympic award costs a few dollars. The age group version adds laser engraving — the placement and the bracket, etched per runner, one mold doing the work for all of them.
The strange ones we get asked to make
The specialty category is where races get creative. Charity medals that carry a cause’s logo. Distance medals, so a 5K runner and a full marathoner can tell each other’s apart from across the street. Commemorative medals for a city’s anniversary. And interactive ones — the spinner that rotates a skyline behind a name, the slider that reveals a time, the medal that doubles as a bottle opener. These cost more, because they need extra molds and extra hands to assemble. But they are also the ones that end up in social media posts, which is free marketing for next year’s entry list.
What the metal is actually doing
Material quietly decides how a medal ages. Zinc alloy melts at 385 degrees and pours into the finest detail — a runner’s silhouette, the thin lines of a logo — and it does not rust. Iron is cheaper, and iron betrays you outdoors: the plating wears, the rust starts, and your finisher medal corrodes on someone’s shelf. We tell every race the same thing — if your event is outside or humid, skip iron, always.
How I’d tell you to choose
If you asked me today, I would say: pick the finisher or participation medal as your core, because that is what most of your runners take home. Then add the podium and age group pieces only if your race is competitive enough that those top spots genuinely mean something. A charity 5K needs one type, maybe two. A timed marathon with an age group structure needs more.
The full breakdown of every category — the finisher versus participation question, the specialty types, the material and finish options — is in the marathon medal types guide we published on BadgeArtisans. And if you are sitting on an event date and a rough idea, the custom marathon medals page is where the real conversation about your design starts.
After fifteen years of making these, the part I still love is the first look on a finisher’s face — the moment they turn the medal over, read their name, and realize it was worth every month of training. Getting the type right is a small part of that. But it is the part we can control, and it is worth getting right.
