The Trophy Dilemma

This year we won 3 trophies!

At the end of every season we have won trophies, I have been unsure as to how to "share" the season's prize. The first year, I rotated the trophy between homes for about a year. That was a logistical nightmare. Also, it ended up coming back to us broken. The second year, I just held onto the trophy. Nobody seemed to complain. This year, my third year, we decided to build our own trophies for each of the kids. This was also a difficult task, but I'm more satisfied with the results.

We built a mock up trophy that matched the big one we got at state. Then I went to Bricklink.com to buy the pieces from as few sellers as possible to save on the shipping and handling. Also, I stayed in the US so I didn't have to pay extra for postage. If you aren't familiar with Bricklink, it's like an eBay for LEGO pieces only. It's a wonderful resource that I've used for years to get replacement parts.

State trophy on the left. Our homemade one on the right.
Ours is 6.5" tall.

The toughest part was getting the pieces correctly counted and figuring out exactly which colors I wanted. My first choice was a yellow trophy, but since they don't make as many yellow pieces, the prices were higher and I would have had to go to more sellers. In order to make this somewhat cost effective, I had to stick with the somewhat boring color of "light bluish gray" for the trophy. If you are making just one, maybe you can find more fun colors. I had to make 6.

We made the trophy base big enough to include a metal plate that we stuck on there with double sided tape. I went to a local trophy store and ordered some plates. We put all the accomplishments for the season for the kids. Also, we got the logos for Senior Solutions and FIRST on the plate (in color).

The cost was somewhere in the neighborhood of $20 for each trophy including the cost of the plate. I had the families help pay for some of that cost. If you are interested in making your own trophy, I've recorded the parts and taken photos of the steps involved. We tried making this in LEGO Digital Designer, but there is a step in the end where you need to use a little elbow grease with this build and basically FORCE a few pieces together. LDD doesn't like that.

For complete instructions you may download this pdf.