DEC beige/creame/white paint

I have the top panel of an 11X44 that is pretty scuffed up and needs some paint. That's the white/beige/creame color on the DEC "corporate cabinets" (not H960's). It is also the same color as the front of an RL01, RL02, RAxx, etc. Before someone says "just mount the RL0x at the top", that wouldn't be appropriate since this is an 11X44 configuration (11/44 cpu at the top with a full length door under it that has an opening for two TU58 tapes). The scuffs on the top panel are pretty bad so just a "paint stick" type of approach won't help. I'm going to be looking at wax & grease remover, sanding, self-etching primer, chipguard, and paint. What fun. In addition, I also have a lot of tiny touchup spots on various boxes - mostly the front of RL0x's - that needs just a tiny "paint stick" type of approach. So I took the panel into a metal paint shop in town well known for their expertise to see about getting the paint matched. They said that since the top is textured, the peaks & valleys will look brighter/darker and thus you can't put a piece like that on one of those optical scanners and get a good color match. They said it may give a starting point but it'd have to be matched by hand (eye) because of the type of textured surface the panel has. To come up with an exact match paint (done by hand/eye), I could get a quart for $50.00 USD. Then from that quart I could have spray cans made (they put custom paint in spray cans) at $7.00 each. I would envision having perhaps a can or two made for spraying, and leave the rest in the quart container for "paint stick" type of touchups - when there's a small scratch that just needs to be dabbed with a matchstick, etc. Since I know absolutely NOTHING about paint/painting, I wanted to toss this out on the list to see if what this place is suggesting sounds right, and if the prices seem reasonable. If so, then I also wanted to offer some spray cans of the paint to other listmembers to help defray the cost for myself. I know that one can probably buy a color that is sortof close right off the shelf, but I'd rather have an exact match... Thoughts? Jay West