I would take a shell simply in the case that I fail this inspection for stupid little things. My buddy has done this many times but always manages to fail for cracked mudguards, broken fog bulb, or something silly like that.
Why have you not mentioned this mysterious East Coast state, yet???.... you're asking for somebody on here to provide you their VIN, yet you're treating your state like, uhm, a "state secret."
It would be more helpful to your case if you provided pics of the car and this hood... and I'm still not clear on the hood VIN issue. Hoods are replaced all of the time due to front end collisions. I'm not aware of a VIN anywhere on the hood, and even if there was one, then you have a bill of sale, so why do you need a VIN? Any question at inspection, you have the FB bill of sale from the guy that never responds, right?
I'm sorry, but your lack of detail of where you are or who you are and the fact that your brand new to this forum given your question is for somebody's VIN # is a red flag. We of course don't know if you're really even in the United States. Maybe you are, maybe you're not - you've yet to provide what state you're rebuilding this car. Maybe if you provided your specific state, somebody else on here might be familiar with that state and be able to be more helpful with your concerns -- did you not consider that?