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So I thought a would try to save some money and buy an aftermarket replacement emblem for my hood. I found aftermarket emblems on ebay for $39.95 or $74.95 for front and rear which is way less than the cheapest I could find OEM or $144.95 for the pair.
While I am a big fan of saving money with aftermarket parts sometimes it pays to just spend the extra money. I would not have wanted to put this on my car even if it were their version of a good one. See exactly what I got as it came out of the shipping envelope in pictures below. Fortunately the seller was reputable and refunded me and I lost no money.
Ewwww gross! There are several good aftermarket emblem manufactures. I've used emblempros quite a few times for the vette and camaro. All officially licensed and whatnot.
I'd just go without emblems if they were that expensive though. ha!
I don't understand how they can charge so much for a couple of pieces of plastic...there can't be more than 1 or 2 bucks worth of material there, if that...
I posted this in another recent response if it is of any interest...
I have my original front and rear emblems off my 2001. Not really trying to sell them, but have just been keeping them as a backup in case my 3rd party ones did not work out that I installed soon after I bought the car.
I would not want to break up the set, but if someone needed both the front and rear, I would sell mine for $70. Other than needing new adhesive to attach them, they are like new.
2020 Corvette of the Year Finalist (performance mods)
C5 of Year Winner (performance mods) 2019
seems like they would be pliable so you could form them to the shape needed and use some adhesive to hold them on?... there is a seller on ebay that sells some really nice carbon inserts as well as many other variations of the flag inserts but I don't think he has any that look like stock so if you don't want to veer away from the oem look then you might not like them
I don't understand how they can charge so much for a couple of pieces of plastic...there can't be more than 1 or 2 bucks worth of material there, if that...
It's likely two fold.
The C5 emblem has two major components in it's design; the emblem surround and the inserts. The emblem surround is not "flat"; it needs a very well-built industrial grade mold to produce clear detail and consistency. In the example the OP posted, an original emblem was likely used to create a mold, with the mold itself not being of good enough quality to pull OEM -style surrounds out of, hence the resultant lack of quality in the reproduction.
The inserts on the emblem are also fairly well made OEM. The reds in particular do not tend to fade like normal red colored emblems do. Aftermarket has quality insert options but they're not in the OEM style.
Which goes into the other side of the coin; trademark. I would imagine a licensed reproduction emblem has the fees paid for trademark as part of the emblem's cost.
I don't know if you could make an exact OEM quality reproduction emblem for anything remotely South of $60-$70.
I don't understand how they can charge so much for a couple of pieces of plastic...there can't be more than 1 or 2 bucks worth of material there, if that...
By that line of thinking, a C7 at 3600# (or so?), and an exaggerated $1 per pound for raw material should be around $4000. Cool!
09-27-2017, 01:19 PM
Aftermarket Emblems, Do Not Waste Your Time
