You’re staring at a screen full of shiny plastic trophies and $3 medals, wondering if the deal is too good to be true. It’s a classic internet moment. You need forty soccer trophies by Saturday, and Crown Awards popped up with prices that make your local engraving shop look like a heist. But is Crown Awards legit, or are you about to throw the team’s budget into a black hole?
Honestly, I’ve been there.
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The short answer is yes. They are very real. They aren't some fly-by-night operation running out of a basement in a country you can't find on a map. They’ve been around since 1978. Chuck Weisenfeld started the whole thing in a tiny storefront in Brooklyn, and now they operate out of a massive 250,000-square-foot facility in Hawthorne, New York. We’re talking about a company that’s been shipping "Great Job!" plaques for over forty years.
The Reality of Those Online Reviews
If you look at Shopper Approved or Trustpilot, the numbers are kind of staggering. We're talking over 200,000 reviews with a 4.8-star average. That’s a lot of happy soccer moms and corporate HR managers.
But then you hit the Better Business Bureau (BBB) page and see an "F" rating.
Wait, what? How does a company go from "literally perfect" to "failing grade" in one click? This is where people get confused. The BBB gives out failing grades often because a company doesn't respond to specific complaints on their platform. Crown Awards has had a handful of complaints—maybe four or five in a year—that they didn't officially close out through the BBB's system. When you ship millions of trophies, five people are going to be mad. It’s math.
Most of the beef people have usually boils down to three things:
- The shipping cost (it can be pricey because trophies are heavy).
- Broken items during transit (plastic is fragile, and FedEx can be rough).
- Personalization typos (sometimes it's the customer, sometimes it's the machine).
Quality vs. Price: What are you actually buying?
Let's be real for a second. If you’re paying $5.00 for a trophy, you aren't getting hand-carved Italian marble. You're getting plastic on a weighted base.
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Crown Awards is the king of "good enough." Their stuff looks great on a mantle or a kid's bookshelf. The engraving is usually crisp, and the turn-around time is genuinely fast. I’ve seen orders placed on a Monday arrive by Thursday. That's their real "secret sauce"—speed.
They have a massive "Only at Crown" line where they design their own stuff. This keeps the prices down because they aren't just a middleman buying from a wholesaler. They are the wholesaler.
The Franchise Confusion
There is a slight distinction you should know. There is Crown Awards (the big online giant) and then there is Crown Trophy. They are connected by history—Chuck Weisenfeld founded both. Crown Trophy is a franchise system with about 150 physical stores across the US.
If you want to walk into a shop, touch the trophy, and talk to a human named Gary, you go to a Crown Trophy store. If you want the absolute lowest price and don't mind a box arriving at your porch, you use CrownAwards.com.
Is Your Data Safe?
In 2026, everyone is worried about their credit card being sold to a bot in Eastern Europe. Crown Awards uses standard encryption, and they’ve updated their privacy policies to keep up with the latest state laws in places like California and Virginia. They've been around long enough to know that a data breach is way more expensive than just being honest.
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The Verdict on Crown Awards
They’re legit. They’re basically the Amazon of the trophy world.
If you need a high-end, one-of-a-kind crystal award for a retiring CEO, you might want to spend a bit more elsewhere for something heavy and handmade. But for fantasy football, youth sports, or "Employee of the Month" plaques? It’s hard to beat them.
Actionable Next Steps:
- Check the weight: If you’re worried about quality, look for "weighted" bases in the description so the trophy doesn't feel like a toy.
- Double-check your spelling: Once that laser hits the plate, there’s no "undo" button. Most complaints are actually user-error typos.
- Factor in shipping early: Don't wait until the checkout screen to realize that shipping ten heavy trophies costs $25. Budget for it from the start.
- Inspect immediately: As soon as the box arrives, open it. If something is snapped, their customer service is usually pretty quick to ship a replacement if you catch it right away.
- Use the "Reorder" feature: If you do this every year, create an account. It saves your logos and previous text, which prevents you from messing up the "2026" vs "2025" date.