looking for car club plaques to build some book ends for my little pages I went on Ebay and found one with newer looking paint for $34.00 with a little patina on it but I also found another identical one for $199.95 both say, "SPEED GEMS MPLS MINN." on them but the newer looking one with better paint has clearly stamped letters and the one with older looking paint has it cast in back in much less clear bigger litters. I did find another one from a different location with the more clearly stamped letters does anybody know of they did their logo different over the years?
O'brien Truckers is your friend, not only for pics but to buy from: https://www.obrientruckers.com/ppwd_plaques/index
If some generic repops will do ya, Mooneyes has 'em for $30. https://www.mooneyesusa.com/Nostalgic-Car-Club-Plaques-p/mqa3001.htm
Well this is the original Speed Gems pattern for that plaque that is made of Masonite and hand caved linoleum) . It is one of the 4100 SG patterns I have and I'd be glad to make as many as you want - but they will have an O'Brien Truckers logo on the back. (maybe). Both of those SG plaques that you posted pictures of look like originals to me. When I get plates made from the foundry they grab one of my matchplates and make them for me. The key words there are "on of" - I have a lot of matchplates with multiple different backcastings and sometimes get the plaques with no backcasting at all. On a large order, there may even be a mix of backcasting within one order. And I'm absolutely sure that SG had more than one matchplate that they used over the years. There is no assurance that the foundry will use the same matchlpate for reorders; it's just the luck of the draw and I have no idea what's on the back of any of the 180,000 plaques I've made for 14, 400 orders with one exception. When I made a batch of plaques for Disney to sell in their CARS store they had a custom backcasting that was unique to them!. I've thrown away many wooden matchplates over the last 47 years. And for that matter, if the foundry has empty space on a matchplate for someone else's product, they can easily attach my pattern and make plaques for me instead of "wasting space" in a mold. Hope this helps you guys! And if you want to search through the 12,000 plaques patterns from Speed Gems and Chicago Metal Craft made in the 1950/60's (guaranteed Traditional!) here is the search page from ,y website - any questions just call between noon and midnight 508-248-1555 https://www.obrientruckers.com/ppwd_plaques/index (and that plaque's brother )
O'Brien Truckers has a very extensive inventory, and are reasonably priced. They had three plaques from clubs that were in my area.
The Jalopy Journal
