An Ohio used-car dealer maintains a website where he sells used channel letters. There, he wrote, “It all started when I found a neon, channel-letter sign for sale on eBay©. The sign read ‘Baseball Cards.” I immediately noticed I could use most of the letters to spell out ‘Car Sales.”
The auto seller bid and won the auction, then drove to Chicago, to obtain the letters. He said, also, that he soon bought other secondhand channel letters, to complete his car-sales sign.
Surely, a photo of his business appeared somewhere in ST’s Ugly Sign Contest.
If you’re not a letter builder, skip eBay and order your channel letters from such makers as Esco (Watertown, SD); World Wide Sign Systems (Shawano, WI); Sign America (Richmond, OH); Sign Builders (Birmingham, AL); All Around Sign Co. (Albuquerque, NM); Letter Fab (Crested Butte, CO) or Superior Wholesale Signage (Daytona Beach, FL).
If you build them, but want to expand your operation with automated equipment, check out such companies as Computerized Cutters (Plano, TX); Arete Corp., (Denver); CLN of South Florida (Belle Glade, FL); Fastac™ (Austin, TX); Easy Channel Letters, LLC, (Denver); SDS (Anyang City, South Korea); and iBend (Riverside, MO). Such manufacturers may also offer automated trimcap and face-forming devices.
Also, Aries Graphics’ (San Marcos, CA) Neon Wizard software now includes a return plot module for channel letters.
For LED-based channel-letter lighting systems, check out USLED (Houston); Tetra (East Cleveland, OH); and International Light Technologies (Peabody, MA).