Digitise trophy engravings and historic winner records

How does Trophy.guru digitise decades of old sports trophies with engraved names and dates?

Create a club archive, add a trophy and upload clear photographs of the trophy and every engraved plate. Trophy Guru uses AI to read the photos together and suggest winner names and years. Check the suggestions against the photos, correct errors and add missing winners from other records. Repeat for the rest of the collection, then export a CSV archive or share a searchable online honours board. Start with one trophy free, with no payment card required.

Gather the original evidence

Take a photo of the whole trophy, then close views of each engraved area. Include the trophy name. Overlap photos where text curves around a cup or base. Keep the trophy and original club records as sources.

Make the lettering visible

Glare and curved metal can hide letters. Try another angle and take more than one photo of a hard-to-read line. Photograph plates on their own where useful. Old boards and result sheets may help fill gaps.

Separate transcription from confirmation

Trophy Guru suggests names and years from your photos. Check each reading against the image. Look at other club records if a name is unclear. You can edit a record or add a missing year when you find better evidence.

Preserve and share the result

Confirm the checked winners and export a CSV copy. Share an honours board when the club is ready. Work through a large collection one trophy at a time. The quality of the archive depends on the sources and the checks your club makes.

Can I upload a batch of trophy photographs?

Yes. Select several photographs for the trophy you are working on. They are saved and read together in the background after you pause uploading. Keep each trophy's photos with its own record; the batch upload does not sort a mixed collection into separate trophies. For a large collection, start with one trophy, check the results and work through the rest in manageable groups.

Can I search the winners and export the archive to Excel?

The online honours board has views by year, trophy and person. Export the whole archive, completed trophies or an individual trophy as CSV, which can be opened in Excel. The export includes trophy details, years, winners and review states, with optional member-match information. It is a records export; photographs are not included in the CSV.

Are the photographs kept with the records?

Uploaded evidence photos stay in the private archive so you can check proposed readings against their sources. They are not included on the public honours board. Keep a separate copy of your original photographs: uploads may be resized for processing, and the CSV export does not contain image files. Export your records and retain your original photos as part of your own archive handover.

Trophy engraving transcription needs more than ordinary OCR

OCR means optical character recognition: reading text from an image. A flat printed page usually gives it clear lines and even contrast. Trophy engraving can be shallow, reflective, worn or wrapped around a curved surface. That is why a photograph that looks attractive may still be a poor record of the lettering.

Trophy Guru uses AI-assisted reading of your image set to propose the winner records. It is designed to help with trophy inscriptions and supporting club records; it is not a service for buying or engraving new trophies. Photograph each band with overlap, check unclear letters from another angle, and compare proposed names with a reliable club source before confirming them.

For a practical photography and checking sequence, follow our guide to cataloguing winners from trophies and honours boards. Then see how reviewed records appear on the example board.

Explore the service

Explore the public honours board demo, read the current pricing or start your club archive.