Just wanted to provide an update. With a lot of help from Emdude, I managed to get in touch with a place in LA who can make the plates for a great price (in 304 stainless). I think pricing should be comparable to the ALPS party GB. MOQ isn't super high, meaning that it won't be hard to get enough orders to make this happen.
I reached out to JDCarpe, and hopefully we will be able license his plate design.
I think I'm only going to do AEKII plates this time around because most of the interest has been for that, and it will be simpler to do just one design rather than trying to do a whole bunch. I'm a noob at this, and would love to crush it the first time around and do something more complicated later.
Hoping to get this show on the road pretty soon!