What is the difference between a Title Plate and a Detail Plate? These terms, along
with other terms relevant to our craft, are defined in detail on our Trophy Terms page.
What kind of engraving is typical for my award? This varies by the type of award, but
a general rule of thumb is to keep it as concise as possible. Not only will it save you money,
but it will look better, too!
For a typical "keeper" award, the engraving is most often in the following format:
Accomplishment and Year
Name of Winner
Optional Additional Info
For example, if you were giving an award for the winner of your fantasy football league,
you might have it engraved as follows:
2002 SFFL Champion
Joe Smith
Smithereens
On the other hand, if you do not intend to purchase a new award each year, but instead
pass this award around, you may have it engraved as follows:
Something Fantasy Football League
Championship Trophy
That top line in the last example is really pushing the limits of most trophy plates.
Beyond 20-25 characters, it may be necessary to engrave the letters smaller to allow
them to fit on the plate. So try to keep it around 20-25 characters per line max.
Most trophies have a nominal amount of engraving that would be done at no charge - this
is typically 40 characters (where a character is anything engraved - letters, numbers,
punctuation, but not spaces). This number is not an accident - most awards look best with
about that amount of engraving, split across 2 or 3 lines.
For a "traveling" award which includes a title plate and several detail plates,
you have a little more to consider.
For the title plate, typically the name of the league/organization is featured. Some
awards even allow for a logo to be featured along with the text. If you
include the term "Championship Trophy" on the title plate, then you might save some
money on the engraving of detail plates, since "e;Champion"e; or "e;Winner"e; would not be necessary on
those plates. In other words, if you have "Championship Trophy" on your title plate, then
you don't need to have "20xx Champion" on the detail plates - you can just feature the
year; the title plate has explained that the person listed on the detail plate is a
champion.
Title plates usually have less information than detail plates - no more than 1 or 2
lines. A typical title plate might contain:
Something Fantasy Football League
Championship Trophy
And then the detail plates might have something like:
2008
Joe Smith
Smithereens
Or, as an alternative, the title plate could contain just the league name:
Something Fantasy Football League
And then the detail plates would have something like:
2008 Champion
Joe Smith
Smithereens
Do you make a replica of the Lombardi Trophy? The Heisman Trophy? The Oscar? The Grammy Award?
No. We cannot reproduce any award that is copyrighted or trademarked. Costs would be
prohibitive to acquire a license to reproduce these awards, if the owner of those awards
even allow for that. Our Pinnacle Trophy is the closest thing we have to the Lombardi Trophy, and our
Football Runner Statuette is the closest thing
we have to the Heisman award. We do not have an award similar to a Grammy Award, but we do
have one similar (but not a reproduction) of the Academy Awards' Oscar(R), which we call
The Oscer. You can find our Pinnacle Trophy and Football Runner Statuette in our
Fantasy Football section, and The Oscer trophy in our
Awards for Other Activities section.
Can I place my order by phone? That sounds like it would be a good idea, but awards are customized to your specifications, and they aren't much
good if they are not customized correctly. At Affordable Trophies, we only accept written engraving information.
It is too easy to misunderstand something over the phone, even if words are spelled out (for example, f's and s's
often sound a lot alike on the phone). By requiring the engraving information in writing, there is never a question
as to whether it is what the customer requested. The best way to submit your request is using our forms on our web site.
Doing so allows us to import the engraving info
directly from the quote to our engraving equipment, so you are guaranteed to receive the text engraved as you
see on your order. We do everything possible to ensure that you receive your awards customized to your specifications.
What is typical turnaround time? During non-peak times, we can often ship orders
within three business days of the day payment is received. Typical turnaround time, including time in transit,
is within two weeks or less after we receive payment for shipments within the US; shipments to Alaska and Hawaii typically take
a bit longer. If you pay via e-check, PayPal asks us to wait until the payment has cleared before processing your
order.
If you have a particular date by which you must receive your awards, please be sure to
tell us up front. If there is no way we can make it, we will be honest and tell you. If
we can't provide your awards, we want to leave you as much time as possible to make
arrangements elsewhere.
Why does the Order Tracking information for my order say that it has shipped at a date in the future?
No, we are not psychic! We often have the tracking information posted before
UPS actually takes posession of the packages. Where you will most often find this kind of thing
is over the weekend, when we will have generated a tracking number, but
UPS will not take the package until the following Monday - in that situation, the tracking
information on our web site will say that it has already shipped, listing the following Monday
as the date shipped.
Can you engrave my logo? We can imprint your logo in full color, black and white, or
grayscale. Be sure to read the information regarding
submitting artwork.
If we find any problems with your artwork, we will contact you as soon as possible for
replacement. The most common reason we reject artwork is that it is not sufficient quality to
feature on an award. Most of the graphics most of us work with are optimized for the
Internet - and it takes far more resolution to look good when imprinted
than to display on your computer's screen.
Read over that information on our Artwork Information page, and
email us if you have any questions.
Believe us, if you cannot produce an image to meet those specifications, you would not
want an award featuring that image.
One additional note on this topic ... Please do not ask us to engrave or imprint a logo that is
copyrighted or licensed - for example, the NFL logo. It is illegal to reproduce such images. Be
sure that you own the rights to any image you ask us to reproduce.
Can you send me a catalog? No. We do not produce a printed catalog. We are
constantly adding new products and new techniques - it just does not make sense for
us to go through the expense of printing a catalog that will be out of date so soon.
That is one of the ways we keep our costs down, to provide less expensive awards for you.
I don't have a PayPal account - can I still pay by credit card?
PayPal is now allowing us to accept credit card payments, even if the
payer is NOT a PayPal member! So, if you are not signed up with PayPal, no need to go through
that hassle - just follow the instructions at the bottom of your quote (click on the
"PayPal Click Here to Pay" button). You may also pay via electronic check through
PayPal. Please see our
Credit Card Information page for more details.
For time and security considerations, we do not accept credit card payments over the phone.
Can you ship to an APO address? A PO box? International? We ship virtually all trophies
exclusively through UPS, so a street address is required. As much as we'd like to, we cannot
ship to APO addresses, or countries outside of the United States.
We can ship to military bases within the US if a street address is provided.
If you need to place an order
and cannot provide a street address within the United States, you will have to give us such an
address of someone who can receive the order for you and make arrangements with them to
deliver your order. Please see our Shipping Terms for more information.
Can you give me a quote now and let me tell you our engraving information after the winner's name is known?
We cannot provide a quote unless ALL specifications are known. We can give you a
good-faith estimate, but please don't ask us to commit to a quote until we have all
the information pertaining to the award(s) needed.
I ordered a traveling trophy from you last year. Can you engrave a plate for this year's champion in the exact same style in which the previous plates were engraved?
You bet! We keep all engraving files from previous orders, so it would be no problem to engrave
another plate in the same font size/style as we did on your previous order. If you are ordering just
additional plates for awards you ordered from us previously, we typically ship them via uninsured
US Mail to save on shipping costs. Let us know if you would prefer them to be shipped via UPS (the
cost would be significantly higher). To request a new plate, please use our Plate Request form.
Please note: If you are ordering a new plate for a traveling trophy you purchased from us previously,
it is your responsibility to make sure that all spelling is correct and that the text is laid out as you would like. We will
use your previous order as a template to make sure that the same font and lettering size is used, but we cannot re-structure
your submitted engraving info to make sure that, for example, the team name and team owner are in the same order as your previous plates.
Your shipping prices are higher than I expected. How come?
We're shipping awards here, not books or CD's. We can't just throw them in a box, hand them to
the mailman, and expect them to be received in mint condition. We have costs that must be covered
to package each item so that they will not be damaged with normal handling by UPS. We have found
shipping via US Mail to be unsatisfactory for our awards, so we only ship them via UPS. The majority of
the charge in our shipping price is the UPS part, but that is not the only cost - we have to cover
the cost of boxes, packing material, and labor to package your order. That last item is something
that most people don't think about, but I really don't think you want your order to be packaged by
someone who is doing it for free! So, there are costs to package and send your award that you may
not have been considering. Some places hide those costs in the price of their products - we don't.
We charge a fair price for the product, and a fair price for the shipping.
I sent you an email message requesting a quote, but you never replied?
Spam is getting to be a major problem. Not only because of the aggravation of having to wade through
it in your inbox to see what you really want to read, but because of all of the attempts to filter
out all of the Viagra and bodily enhancement emails. No filter is perfect, and if you did not hear
back from us, chances are that our message got caught in a spam filter. If you run your own spam
filter, be sure to check the messages that it blocked to see if ours is in there - you may need to
tweak it to allow ours to come through. With some anti-spam software, you may need to add us (sales@fantasysportsawards.com) to your
address book to allow our email messages to come through. If your ISP is blocking our email, there's not much we can do.
The best advice we can give you if that is the case is to complain to your ISP, and to set up an
email account elsewhere (hotmail, gmail, etc.). WE DO NOT SPAM, AND DESPISE THOSE THAT DO. So, the only reason our email could be blocked is because of an overzealous
spam filter.
What if a trophy is damaged in shipping?
See the Claims section of our Order Information page.
I wish to order more than one of the same award. Do I have to fill out a an order form for each item?
If you wish to order a quantity of an item all with the same (or no) engraving/customization, you
can alter the quantity of the item in your shopping cart. Otherwise, you will need to add each item individually
to your shopping cart.
