Antique gold
Gold electroplate + oxidised wash
Warm gold on the high points, darkened recesses. The wash is what makes 3D relief readable. House finish for Kitchen Classics and most of the American tour.
Medal design
The route, cast in enamel.
A gold rim, a full-color scene, paddles and a ball, and a ribbon in that place's colors. You play at home. The medal is where the route went.
The lineage
How a medal got this shape.
Round, because coins were round. Then finisher medals left the disc — enamel, a plaque, a ribbon you can read from across a room.
FerraraCast, like a coin
Pisanello casts a bronze portrait medal at the Council of Ferrara — the form most historians call the first Renaissance medal. Round because Roman coins were round. A face on the obverse, a story on the reverse. You hold it. No ribbon yet.
BostonEveryone who finishes
The first Boston Marathon has ten finishers. Each gets a medal. That is the sports finisher: the same object for completing the course, not for beating someone. Ranking medals — gold, silver, bronze — arrive later, at the Olympics.
RomeHung from the neck
Olympic medals were pinned to the chest until Rome hung them on a chain. The coloured ribbon follows. Military campaign medals had already solved this: a bar you can read from across a room when the metal is in a drawer.
Your courtA pickleball finisher
Soft enamel, a gold rim, the route drawn as a scene — a kitchen, palms, a bridge. A ribbon in that place's colors. You play at home. The medal arrives in the mail. Same medal for everyone who hits the count — closer to those ten in Boston than to a podium.
The vocabulary
Four words the metal still uses.
- Obverse
- The face. Renaissance medals put a portrait here. Ours is the route: a paddle, palms, a bridge.
- Reverse
- The story on the back. Pisanello put an emperor on horseback. A table medal you turn over in the hand.
- Relief
- Hills and valleys in the metal. An antique wash sits in the recesses so the paddle reads — the same job a bronze patina did on the first cast medals.
- Ribbon
- Heraldry you can read from across a room. Campaign medals used colour this way before sports did. Each Pennant Court ribbon matches its route — palms, stars, rain, a hibiscus.
The collection
A medal for the route you actually played.
The Kitchen Line
24 games · Any court
The Third Shot Drop
24 games · Any court
Sideline to Sideline
24 games · Club & rec courts
Naples Circuit
24 games · Naples, Florida
Capital Courts
24 games · Washington, DC
Palm Springs Desert Smash
30 games · Palm Springs, California
Brooklyn Mixers
24 games · Brooklyn, New York
Golden Gate Dink
32 games · San Francisco, California
Seattle Rain Rally
28 games · Seattle, Washington
Barcelona Open Courts
40 games · Barcelona, Spain
Tokyo Paddle Tour
36 games · Tokyo, Japan
Caribbean Court Hop
44 games · Island courts
Melbourne Heatwave
30 games · Melbourne, Australia
Midnight Mixer
24 games · Night courts
The Dinker's Odyssey
80 games · Everywhere
The 50-Court American Tour
100 games · United States
The foundry
Cast. Plate. Finish.
- 01
Die-cast
Renaissance medals were cast. Mints later struck them from dies. Modern race medals came back to casting: zinc alloy injected into a steel mold, because 3D relief at volume is a casting problem. The raw disc is silvery-grey. It is not gold yet.
- 02
Electroplate
The casting is polished, then hung in a plating bath. Gold, nickel, copper, or black nickel — a skin, not a nugget. The last solid-gold Olympic medals were too expensive to keep.
- 03
Antique and ribbon
Soft enamel fills the scene. Raised gold lines stay bright. The ribbon matches the route, so you can tell Naples from Brooklyn before you read the name.
Antique silver
Nickel plate + charcoal wash
Cool pewter with a charcoal antique. Hides fingerprints. Used where the place is grey water, fog, or a long map.
Antique bronze
Copper plate + brown patina
Earthy, heavy in the hand. Recesses go almost black. Desert, Odyssey, and other long-wear medals.
Polished gold
Bright gold, no antique wash
Mirror plate. First medals and tropical enamel sit on this so the color, not the patina, does the talking.
Black nickel
Gunmetal nickel, polished
Near-black until the light hits it, then it flashes like silver. Night courts, Tokyo dusk, Brooklyn steel.
Dual plate
Gold bezel over black nickel disc
Two baths, masked. The outer ring stays gold; the inner field goes dark. Championship contrast. Golden Gate and the 50-Court atlas.
Ships when you finish
No start-line expo. No packet pickup. When the game count is done you claim the medal in your rally log and it leaves the workshop. Shipping is inside the United States only. The ribbon is meant to be worn on the court the next week, not stored in a drawer — the same reason campaign medals hung from a bar instead of living in a box.