I am not new to the game and I am on my third character (federation)- I have just reaced the rank of Admiral lower half 3 (my others are Klingon CM4 and fedreation VA) and I have noticed I have lots of emblems (300) but I do not know how I earned them - My understanding was they could only be earned until higher level - How did I miss this?

You get a big lump sum of them for the 500 day veteran reward. You get them immediately on any new character, but of course you can't spend them right away.

You might want to be careful posting the same thing in more than one area though. You can get infractions for that, OP.