I thought I should register and respond to Ed's post. I am the guy that is making the reproduction chassis plates, under the eBay name of aegeanfoods. Firstly, I would like to thank Ed for his patience. They take time to produce and losing a few in the mail does not help to test peoples patience. Some new equipment is being installed which will hopefully speed up the process, but as they are hand made, the processing time is still going to be a few weeks until we bed the whole thing down. I might add that most of the layouts for these plates are new and if we haven't made one before for "X" particular model, this does involve additional time to prepare the artwork.
I note the comments regarding the additional emissions plate and this can be reproduced once I know the dimensions of the plate. I have a photo good enough to work from. I also need to know if the plates were year specific, and model specific. At the moment, all the plates I have indicate the 280SL model and 1970.
For your information, I am also now reproducing the Bosch horn tags, engine tags, and will soon be starting on the Bosch ignition distributor oval tag. I have also recently produced plates for the Universal.
Essentially, any plate can be reproduced from as early as the 500/540K to the late '70's. The variations are enormous between models and markets. For example, 190SL's used 6 different plates over their 8 year production run.
I am here to help, so if you have any queries, please send me a PM or email me directly at reproplates@gmail.com. I will make no apology for not being the cheapest supplier of these plates, but these plates are more expensive to produce than the laser etched or silk screen printed ones. Mine are cauterized and will outlast the others by quite some time. Having said that, they are still 50% cheaper than the Classic Center.
This is not a full time business for me - it is a hobby and came about because I could not get the correct plate when I restored my 300b. I have 15 cars, 9 of which are Mercedes, so I am somewhat passionate about the marque.
By the way, in response to JohnS, the "G" (for Glasurit) goes after the 190.
