recreating back glass...help!

[Blacksmith]

I currently have restored an early 70's big ball bowler and it looks and plays great!  The only thing that looks bad on it is the upper and lower back glass.  Actually, they are silk screened plexi-glass.
I would love to have a reproduction set for my game to finish it off.  I contacted a bowler restoration company that I have dealt with for parts and they actually reproduce back glass for bowlers and have many in stock for other games, just not my game.  They stated that if I sent my set to them, they could reproduce them and get them to me in about 4 weeks time.  I would like to procede with the project, but the cost factor has me wondering if there is a cheaper/better alternative.  They quoted me $345 for the upper glass and $125 for the lower.  It's just a lot of cash to throw down without me checking into a possible alternative.  Anybody out there ever tackle something like this?  I've attached a picture of the original upper and lower glass in question.

[SavannahLion]

Yes, it occurs quite a bit.

If you can scan them in with a scanner (but don't assemble them, this was a problem with the last project and it took several tries to point out the blunder that was occurring) you might be able to find someone who can touch it up and possibly convert it to vectors. At that point you would have a workable file that you can send off to a printer to have a new one printed up. However, I don't know of anyone that prints directly to glass or acrylic. It's usually a sheet that's sandwiched between two pieces of acrylic. The trade off is you can control the costs however you choose but you'll invest more time and effort in the overall process.

For the time and effort that would be spent, you can easily exceed four working weeks. Take a look at some of the other threads to see how long they've gone on. $470 might not look like a bad deal for some people.

If you do send them off to the restoration company, I would insist on getting the originals back. You wouldn't know what kind of quality their work and you'll want to compare the two once everything is said and done. That's just me though.

Some people in the community here would love to archive the resulting image (and possibly the original raw files) as part of the trade off. That could be their incentive for the touch up and/or conversion work.

[Blacksmith]

my brother is a graphic artist, so I'd probably get the family discount there!  The other stuff is the real unknown.