Medals: from collecting them to making them

Former collector Phil McDermott has beaten the Royal Mint to the contract for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.

Many nine-year-old boys dream of being a train driver or an astronaut – and end up with a career in accountancy or health and safety management instead.

Phil McDermott, a 51-year-old from Birmingham, has stayed rather truer to the dreams of his youth. When he was nine, he started collecting medals. Forty-two years later, he has landed a £7 million contract to make 450,000 medals for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee next year.

Worcestershire Medal Services, the small firm McDermott set up with his former wife in 1988 with a lump sum of £120, beat off competition from a stunned Royal Mint, which was founded more than 1,100 years ago. “This has caused one hell of a shock,” an insider recently told the Telegraph’s Mandrake column.

McDermott looks a little shocked himself. “It’s amazing,” he says in a soft Brummie accent, showing us round his factory in the city’s jewellery quarter. “I can’t believe I’m sat here making the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal.”

Article source = http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/theroyalfamily/8978346/Medals-from-collecting-them-to-making-them.html