CN

Does anyone know why they are trying to sell lame plates in the back of "911 & Porsche World" magazine. Most of them are very expensive and aren't that good. What gives?

epbrown01

In England they don't have customized plates like us, nor do they have regional plates - all the numbers are distributed across the entire country at random and are assigned to each car permanently, rather than when the owner changes. This means that if you want a custom plate number, or one with a certain subset of numbers (like 911, 914, 924, 944, 986, 993, 996 or 968) then you have to track down someone with those plates and convince him to give him to you. The more in demand the range, the more monetary convincing the person will need. So you see plates going for outrageous sums of money - as much as $100,000 USD. As I understand it, the ads you're talking about are from companies that scour the country for desirably plate numbers and arrange with the current owners to broker them to people for a fee.

It is analogous to the scramble for desirable domain names on the internet.

Emanuel

CN

Thanks Emanuel, I was overcome with curiosity. I was having trouble deciding whether or not to spend $200 on my plate "GONEAWOL". $100,000 is just crazy.

Cheers,

exc911ence

I've heard that car owners over there are very sensitive about their plates as they advertise the year of the car. Apparently, no one wants to be seen in a car that's not brand new and these "personalized" plates disguise the year of the car. Any UK listers want to confirm this?

Ben Lovejoy

There are really two levels of personalised plate.

The first is just to disguise the age of a car. Standard number plates have a letter or number code that tells you when the car was first registered. So-called dateless plates are thus popular with people who have a well-cared for current-looking car that is a few years old.

The second is to get a meaningful plate, either the owner's initials or name, or something associated with the car. For example, for my 968 I bought the plate BBZ 968.

Although personalised plates look expensive, they tend to either hold their value or appreciate in value, so really you can look on it like just putting some money aside. However, they can take time to sell as you need the right person with the right car to come along. Traders offer a little over half the retail value of a plate, so you can lose money if you need to sell quickly.

Ben