Well you can take the chance, but repo a plate can cause you some big trouble. DMV wants to examine the plates submitted to them be steel and exact size. If you ever got stopped your car could be towed to a tow yard and held until there is an ID verification (your stamped frame number, etc). The fees for towing and the fees for storage in the tow yard can amount to a lot of money. The citation for the "phony" plate could also be expensive. The cost of a real set of plates for your car would be a LOT less than the costs that I have mentioned.
Your "overzealous/big ego" Blue Line Gang comment is very true!
Long true story happened right around early Y2-K!
Freshley married, military discharged officer, (LT, Capt) he and wife wanted to buy a 1960's aluminum multi carb Corvette. Corvette cost was more than they could come up with. Salesman went through COPO and spected out a extremely HD HT with almost the same Corvette motor/trans combo.
Life and family proceded on with 3 kids always excited to "ride around" in Mom/Dad's "noisy hot rod". Miles started piling up high pereformance parts started wearing out. As kids became teenagers, car wasn't as fun to drive anymore. Instead of "trading" the COPO ordered car off for a more family friendly Station Wagon, Mom/Pop just shoved their wedding car off in the corner of the garage and almost forgot about it. You know, "out of sight, out of mind".
After several decades the kids secretly went together and decided to "restore" and present the car for their parent's 50th wedding. The car was so well hidden/buried mom/dad didn't even notice it was missing.
Well known restoration shop agreeded to preform the total restoration, then do a public presentation. After shop got the car all torn down, sorted out, it was discovered that car was a "forgotton" COPO issue. Meaning. Higher level of restortation.
After presentation, duplicate "then and now" pictures made. A 3 volumn photo alblum contained the car's history straight from day 1 order to restortation and presentation was carried in the trunk.
Several years later, Mom/Pop were either going to or comming from a car show. "Over zealious Blue Line Gang member" "Ran" the Year Of Manifactior license plate through DMV-NCIC! Question. What suspicion did the Blue Line Gang Member have to justiify running a decades old plate on a decades old vehicle!? Well, here is where the feces hit the fan so to speak!
The ego driven gang member got the restored YOM plate's numbers and letters backwards. Someone quoted the number wrong, or someone received the plate number wrong!
The number that got recorded, turned out to be a decades old unsolved crime! INSTEAD of investigating, GUNS. Tazers, car ramed off the road. Mom POP were beat up, arrested, spent the nigh in jail, then hospital!
Car was impounded as it was pulled over. While spending close to 5 YEARS in impound ALL those ORIGNAL peformance parts statred to vanish! Car was sideswiped also while in impound.
5 YEARS worth of lawyers fees on the mom, Pop died, and the three kids, just about financially ruined them! They ALL had to move to lesser housing. Typical police tatic. Try to extend the trial to "financially break" defendant.
What I heard, that after 5 years Mom got the car body (what was left of it) back and a 5 digit settelemnt.
The YOM plate I have on our '32 I took to the DMV right after I bought it on ebay, to make sure there were NO wants or warrants. After I had the plate "restored" I took it back to the DMV and had them mix up the numbers a little bit, to make sure something like that won't happen to wifey and I!
