Private Number Plates: Not Just for Celebs
There was a time when a personalised number plate on a motor car was a pretty good hint that the occupant was either a celebrity or someone else with money to burn. Many number plates became almost as famous as their owners, and Paul Daniels' MAG 1C and Jimmy Tarbuck's COM 1C were fine examples of the stereotype star car registration.
With the rise of independent dealers, who actively promote the popularity of private number plates as both a hobby and an investment opportunity, the bug has begun to bite a far wider audience, and literally thousands of ordinary people in the UK have personalised their vehicles with a set of personal number plates.
For some, obviously, it is an ego thing – an exercise in “look-at-me!”. For others a set of personal plates is simply a way of adding a little character to an otherwise soulless, generic vehicle. A change from furry dice.
Increasingly, companies are buying custom number plates for their vehicles – even for entire fleets. Pimlico Plumbers in London have equipped dozens of vans with numbers that spell plumbing related words, such as W4 TER and DRA 1N. The owner of the company is on record as saying that he considers his fleet of private registrations to be the most effective long-term advertising he has ever done.
Another, growing, sector of the market consists of people who actually buy personal vehicle registrations for investment purposes. At recent auctions the prices paid for the very best registrations have broken records again and again. A really top-notch private registration can now bring in hundreds of thousands of pounds. Not all plates are at that level, but it is still a healthy market, even for more modest examples. It is very common for plates acquired for a couple of hundred pounds to double or triple in price.
There are a few essential judgment calls to be made when assessing the investment potential of a number plate.
If the plate in question is a dateless registration, with one group of numbers and one group of letters, rather than one which spells a name or word, then it is generally considered that those where the letters come before the numbers are more desirable, and thus often more valuable. For example, LF 1 could be worth significantly more than 1 LF. Dateless plates are very popular in any configuration, however, because they do not bear a year indicator letter or number. They can therefore be applied to a vehicle of any age, and would effectively conceal the age of the vehicle.
With a “name” number plate, one of the factors one needs to bear in mind is how common that name is in the UK. A number plate which spelled the name “LOGAN” would have a rather smaller potential market than one that spelled “SMITH”; thus it may well have a slightly lower resale value, and a similarly restricted chance of resale. Another, all-important, consideration is how well the character combination on a plate actually resembles the name or word that it is intended to represent. The name “BOYD” for example, may be approximated by the registrations 8 OYD or 13 OYD. The former, when printed on a number plate is visually considerably more similar to the name than the latter which uses more characters to achieve the spelling, and to less convincing effect. Another factor affecting value is that lower numbers on dateless plates tend to be more expensive. The price of 8 OYD would , therefore, be quite a lot higher than that of 13 OYD.
So, with a growing market amongst ordinary people looking for a mark of individualism, companies seeking inventive marketing methods and money-minded purchasers speculating on investment potential... as you can probably see, these days personal plates are for everyone.
Rick Cadger is a staff writer for Regtransfers.co.uk: The World of Personal Number Plates, the UK's only professional magazine for the cherished plates industry and enthusiasts.
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