After 26 years running Lismore Trophies, Brian and Lyn Pool have put the South Lismore business up for sale.

The couple have been providing perpetuals, trophies, plaques and shields to local sporting clubs and other organisations - plus an assortment of engraving and printing services - since the early 1990s.

However, they're now looking to retire.

Lyn’s background is in nursing while Brian was previously an accountant and they got into the business “by accident” after deciding to leave Sydney.

“The business was available and we thought it would work well for us as it didn’t require any previous experience,” Lyn said.

“It was a five-year plan to start with... and it’s been 26 years now.

“A few times we've thought of doing other things but this has been really financially stable - we put three kids through uni and bought a lovely home - so we stayed with it.”

Brian said the business had evolved over the years and now involved more engraving than trophy sales.

“We do a lot of signage - building signs, directional signs - a lot of specialized engraving on all sorts of different things from timber to glassware - just about anything that people want us to engrave on,” he said.

“We've also got a printing system called sublimation, which is full color print, that we use as a value add to what we do.”

The strangest commission Brian can remember receiving was engraving mystical symbols on an assortment of test tubes.

“They wanted symbols like moons and stars and all that sort of thing,” Brian said.

“We found out later it was a Byron ‘alternative’ site and they were selling magic elixirs.

“They had coloured water in these test tubes they we had put the symbols on and they sold them as manna from heaven.

“The head honcho ended up in jail for fraud and scams.”

He said they had also done some unusual engravings for sporting clubs including bones mounted on plaques and “pisspots” for club awards.

While the business is doing well and they have enjoyed running it - especially the connection to the local community - Lyn said it was now time to hand over the engraving machines to someone else.

“We live at Lennox and we find the drive here is getting tiresome,” she said.

“We just want to retire and walk the beach with our dog Banjo and just have our holidays and do stuff and not have to work anymore.”

She said it had been a “really good little business”.

“It's really kept us going and allowed us to do a lot of things.

“Hopefully someone will find us that's going to continue it and maybe have more energy that we have to do more. There's a lot more you could do with it.

“I do a lot of graphic work for weddings and baby showers and those sort of personalized things and if someone with some energy was keen to market that online it would be really good.

“Hopefully someone with some great ideas will come along.”

Anyone interested in buying the business can call Lyn and Brian direct on 66218 912 or 0432371240.