Unusual Registration Plates

Registration Plates that are unusual

Keen private plate drivers will have been on the ball with securing their special plate or unusual registration plate when the latest series of number plates came out on the 1^st September – the ‘61’ plate.

Unusual private registration plates are becoming more and more popular therefore the DVLA have reserved some for auction as they are likely to raise large sums of money.

Take for example private number plates such as EN61 AND which highly resembles our cherished country England and will, therefore, attract huge interest in the marketplace and is likely to fetch around £10,000.

Since 2001, the DVLA release a new indicator for new vehicles every 6 months. The third and fourth digits in the plate show when the plate was issued. In March, the registrations have a number to correspond with the year so for example, 2002 had 02, 2003 had 03, 2010 had 10 and so on. The September releases are similar except the number is 50 more than the March issue. This means that it is easy to work out when a combination will be released. So a plate such as HU66 ETT will be released in September 2016 and MR84 KER which looks like MR BAKER would be introduced in 2034 which is exciting if your surname is Baker!

Checking for unusual registrations at DVLA

There is lots of checking for unusual registrations at DVLA although there is a team that decides on which are auctioned and which are sold for general release. When this has been decided, the leftover registrations are released to car dealers so that they can be registered on new cars. Rude or offensive number plates are also monitored and taken off the list as these are now banned.

The plates that are picked for auction are then advertised by the DVLA auction team by posting them in catalogues which they send to their subscribers. The auctions can knock up around £3 million at each one and the proceeds will go to the treasury. The majority of the people that attend the DVLA auctions are members of the public and as private number plate businesses find it easier to bid online from home.

Occasionally, there are plates in the DVLA Auction sales that seem to have slipped through the system. For example, in March 2003 DVLA auctioned off GPF 146G, LGW 809G and HMP 729G.

These plates appear to be ordinary number plates however they are sold for over £3000 each at the sale. It was then discovered that they were the registrations on the cars that appeared in the famous Rover Mini film “The Italian Job”. It was David Morton that purchased the plates and transferred them onto his restored Mini Coppers. It is claimed that he also had the cars signed by Sir Michael Cain (who starred in the film) which of course added to their value.