Two important points: You aren't buying the physical plate, you're buying the right to use that particular sequence of numbers. The physical plate itself is worthless, anyone can print one, what's valuable is the legal right to use it. In the UK, you can't have any arbitrary sequence of letters and numbers on a plate. The vehicle registration authority (the DVLA) only issue plates with particular patterns. So, plates which both fit the current (or a historical) pattern and say something interesting are very rare - that's why they are so expensive.
Also in the US if 8m correct you register plates based on states where as all plates in the UK are different for every car. The US is so big you can't do that. So could have 1D 50 times for 1 of each state
as there are also all different, each is unique? as you dont have state/province plates where it could be I D of london, I D of... dont know the areas. you all have 1 plate style? therefore unique. only 1.
Older (classic) vehicles can still have metal plates (black background and silver text) on if they meet certain criteria, but all new vehicles since the 1970s or so, must by law have yellow and white. Although they can be metal, just painted.
@orwellboy1958 ... Metal number plates are still 100% legal in the UK, most cars are supplied new with plastic number plates but you are legally entitled to swap them for metal plates as long as they are the correct colours for front and back plates.
@@TwoMetresTall Not true, any 40 year old Historic Vehicle Class Tax Exempt vehicle can use Silver Letters over Black Background Metal Number plates, whether they were first issued modern colour plates or not.
You're not paying for the physical item, rather the actual registration itself. Plates have to be unique across the entire UK. So if you're trying to get a really in-demand sequence of characters, you're not buying it from "the government" (they've all already been sold) you're effectively buying it from the current owner. So the price is as high as someone is willing to pay at an auction. Ultimately, personalised plates are a status symbol. you can get personalised plates cheaper where only some of the characters are personalised, 'KY70 DAN' would be far cheaper than 'DAN'
Hi Steve and Lindsay The reason why plates are white on the front and yellow on the back is so other drivers can quickly tell if they're looking at the front or back of the vehicle. This in turn allows drivers on the road to weigh up the likelihood that a vehicle is either moving away from them, or coming towards them.
Hi Steve and Lindsey! The MCL 720S plate originally was a regular plate that would have been issued between August 1977 and July 1978. But now McLaren have launched their 720S, it is now valuable.
Max Bygraves (English singer and performer) had the number plate MB1, and was always being badgered by Mercedes to sell it to them; he never did. I don't know what happened to it when he died.
Best one I ever saw was CYN 1C on a white Austin Maxi belonging to a Lloyds underwriter (in the '60s). I also saw a Rolls Royce parked in the garage of NatWest Bank with the registration BUM 1 (the owner obviously had a sense of humour).
Ok - quite a few questions in the video. I’ll try to answer them all but the other commenters have already covered everything. Hope this is helpful nonetheless. 1 - yellow plates go on the back, white plates go on the front of the car 2 - UK has single organisation to register vehicles, it is not split by state. So many millions of cars on uk roads all need unique identifiers. 3 - The number plate a car comes with (from the factory), stays with the car for life (or unless a private plate is put on later). 4 - A private plate can be put on many cars during its lifetime, but only on a single car. It’s not uncommon to someone to change cars every year but the car reg would always be the same. 5 - a normal registration mark tells anyone how old the car was as they contain a year (or a letter for older cars which identifies the age) 6 - shorter registrations (eg 2ABC) are much older eg were originally on a car in say 1960 or earlier, and have been used on the owners. Therefore worth more. 6 - its absolutely all about vanity - standing out from the crowd
A car is assigned a number plate when it is first sold. That number usually stays with the car for its life, and is in the format "XX23 YYY" where XX represents the geographic area where it was sold, the "23" represents the year of sale, and the YYY are random letters.
The number actually tells you which half of the year it was registered. 23 means first half of the year 73 means second half of the year. Second half number is the Year + 50. 2023, 73. Going back to 2013 it was 63. In 2003 it was 53.
@@MostlyPennyCat I was just keeping it simple for them. But in any case you are wrong - it's even more complex than your explanation. A 73 plate is not for the 2nd half of the year 2023, it covers the period September 2023 to February 2024. And a 23 plate covers March 2023 to August 2023.
In the UK, each car is registered at the point of sale. The plate currently includes the area and year the car was registered. So each car is allocated a sequence of letters and numbers. That is all the registration plate represents. It does not include any extra information, such as owner, insurance etc.. An authority (DVLA) maintains a database of registration vs. owner. Another maintains registration vs. insurance, and another for the yearly MoT (Ministry of Transport) Test vs. the registration. Every number plate allocated since the introduction of number plates can be brought (I believe) - but as another commenter mentioned, it's a private sale as the plate belongs to the car that you own. They can be brought for vanity reasons, but most people just stick with what the car was allocated. Typically they are sold with the car, though you can keep them and transfer it to another vehicle. Physically, they are now made from Acrylic (thick) and white are for the front of the car and yellow for the rear - they (unless original old plates - they may even be black and white) are all a standard size and font. Driving without plates on the front and/or rear is an offence. This is probably to ensure that ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition) works easily. Some people have custom plates (with custom fonts etc..) are allowed to be used on private land, but again, it's an offence to use them on public roads. Side note: the driver is responsible to ensure the car is legal, insured, MoT tested and they have a valid license. These do not need to be carried, as if you're stopped, the relevant databases can be checked by the police (from the comfort of their car).
Any car registered in the uk is issued with a registration number. That number stays with the car for its life. When the car is sold the registration number moves with the car. Privet plates can be used but the car still holds its original registration number (it does not need to be displayed if you have a private plate displayed). You are not buying the plastic plate but the title to that plate. You can then transfer that plate to any vehicle as long as it does not suggest the vehicle is newer than it is. (To explain how the registration tells you the age of the car is a whole other subject) you can remove it from said vehicle and revert back to its original registration number. The reason for white and yellow plates, white displayed on the front and yellow on the back.
Metal number plates stopped being used in 1975, when the UK moved to black text on highly reflective yellow for rear of vehicles. And black text on white for front of a vehicle. Before then we had white text on black number plates. The use of plastic number plates which laminated back plate the text layer and then a transparent cover layer became common in the 1990s . The first ever UK number plate was 1 A .... when you buy a car the number plate comes with it. You can pay a fee to transfer the older plate to the newer car. In 2024 the normal format is AA 72 AAA Two letters two numbers and three letters. The two numbers indicate the year that the plate was issued. There are two pairs of numbers for each year.
In the UK we do not have to pay every year for our registration plates ,we do pay road tax ,the more gas hungry or big your vehicle is the more road tax you pay . which means if you buy private and expensive number plate it is yours for life, it can be transferred to another vehicle of your choosing and it can be inherited .
in Jersey in the Channel Islands, all our number plates start with a "J" and then it is just numbers after. my friend has a WWII Ford Jeep called "D-Day Dolly" and the number plate is J61944 = June 6 1944.
An interesting thing in Jersey (as a fellow islander) is that I believe its still not allowed to just sell the rights to a plate, it has to be on a car and in use to be valid or it just goes back into the pool of possible reg numbers to be issued on new cars. So at auction you see some right old bangers go for loads of money just because they've got an old or interesting plate. I know someone who was a bit cheeky and knew their plate happened to be sought after, and advertised their car for sale with the registration number prominently displayed... then had the registration switched to their new car before the new owner came to pick it up! Luckily they hadn't paid too much over the value of the vehicle just for the plates and weren't too miffed, otherwise I can see someone who really just wanted the plates refusing to actually take the car.
Hi guys these are private plates which are transferable from vehicle to vehicle. The white ones have to be fitted to the front of vehicle yellow for the rear. We have several companies where these can be purchased.
yellow goes on the back and white on the front. We don't pay annual registration fees in the UK although we do pay a road fund licence which is referred to as road tax.
In the uk the number stays with the car for its life, no matter how many owners have it. You can get it changed for a personalised plate but it costs money as you can see.
6 месяцев назад+3
About 20 years ago, I was keeping an eye out for an ordinary number - S108 HAN. That is because it was a ready made 'vanity plate' for my sister, Siobhán. However others were clearly of the same mind as when it came up, it went for £52,500. Most people don't have a private plate. They take the number that is on the car when it has been registered by the dealer they buy it from. And that number will stay on the car until it is scrapped. You can get one for £100 or less, which may mean something to you, but noone else. And in the UK, the white plate is for the front and the yellow is for the rear.
White on the front, yellow on the rear. A friends sister had one on her Merc in the mid 80's, didn't cost her much at the time. She was approached by the manager of a very famous Norwegian band asking to buy it. The plate was 1 AHA , I'm sure you can work out the rest.
You are buying the rights to use the number. No numbers are just made up, they are historic plates. In other words the very first plate issued was A1 probably over a hundred years ago, so all vanity plates just happen to say or mean something. If a car was scrapped without transferring the number, that number is gone forever which makes these (very old) plates more valuable because of scarcity. White plates go on the front, yellow plates go on the rear. I have a personal plate on my car (it says by business name), but it was only £800. If I was a rich man, that 1D plate would be perfect because it looks like my initials.
DVLA will reissue a registration as an age related registration for an imported used vehicle when an age related registration is requested. Registrations beginning with Q were temporary registrations usually issued to Embassies or vehicles that owners were going to export to their house abroad.
Acrylic Registration Number Plates. White on the front and yellow on the back. These follow with the car. When you sell a car, the Registration Number goes with the car unless you physically transfer it. We don't renew them yearly.
With expensive plates, it's essentially super wealthy people showing off. For instance, you might buy a car for £500k and think, "What would set it apart?" So, you get a matching plate for £100k. Meanwhile, the everyday person might spend £250 on a plate with their initials to personalize their car a bit more.
Most vanity registration numbers come from Northern Ireland as NI uses a different format and letters to GB number plates, generally 3 letters followed with between 1 and 4 numbers.
Ordinary plates have the first two letters denoting the area it came from, the next two letters indicate the date of registration. The last three letters are unique to that vehicle where the first 4 characters are not. White in the front, yellow at the back.
In the UK, every number plate is 1 of a kind. And they are only issued on a brand new car. you cant go to the DVLA and get a custom plate the only way is to buy it from the owner of the plate. So for example, the plate "1 D" was issued by the DVLA to the 48th car ever licensed on UK roads.
There’s a difference between UK and US plates. In the US the plates belong to the owner ( I still have mine from when I lived in NJ) while in the UK the plate belongs to the vehicle. You can keep the number but have to go through a process to do so.
loved watching your confusion and misunderstanding of what was going on 😁. In the UK, we don't get to specify what number plate we want. So if you want a personal number plate you have to keep your eye out for a plate coming up for sale which by chance happens to have a combination of lettes and numbers which could be read as your name or initials. So wasn't surprised to see one of the plates held up at beginning of video, 51 NGH, went for a lot of money because if you minimise the space between the numbers and lettes it reads 51NGH which is pretty damn close to SINGH, a common Sikh surname. Since these numbers plates are unique, there is intense competition for those wanting to acquire that particular plate, which of course, drives up the price
the other reason for people buying plates is to hide the age of vehicle. like my car is marked 20 for year 2020 but my plate is from 1970 j reg, J111 BOB. not my real plate .but mine cost £150
In the US you get a new plate when registering your vehicle. In UK the plate is fitted to the car when new and never changes until the day it is scrapped. If you get a personalised plate the original number is put on suspension and you use your personalised plate. When you sell that car the personalised number plate is put on a retainer and the car reverts to the original number. Uk plates are white background on the front of the vehicle and yellow on the rear.
That 1D plate used to be on an Austin Metro at a house that I walked past daily, for years. One day it disappeared and this video is the first time I’ve seen it in yonks!
Yes you can buy personal/private License plates at auction but they do have to be registered with the DVLA (Like your DMV) before they go onto any vehicle, which also has to be linked to the plate.
The number plate "F1" was sold to British automotive designer Afzal Kahn for '£440,625' in 2008. He has stated that he would sell it for approximately £15 million.
I live in the UK and I own a Mini. I have a "stealth" personal plate which means it just looks like a regular plate but only I know that it spells out my initials AND my birthday! (GJ 13DEC) ..... a bargain at only £175. :) The best personal plate I saw was a few years ago..... again it looked perfectly normal and probably didn't cost very much: a girl driving a BMW with the plate BEG 4 11T.. Also there was a local elderly gentleman called Mr. O'Brian: he was always getting hounded by Star Wars fans.... his plate was OB 1.
My plate has my wife's and mines first names' initials followed by the year we were married. We didn't buy it, it was just in the car we bought. We actually didn't notice for years 😂
All new plates are a composite plastic - white on the front; yellow on the back of the car. ( and are reflective for safety) These kind of auctions generate profits for the DVLA. which goes towards their budget - reducing the costs to the taxpayer. You can find these auctions in many local and some national newspapers.
The plates are usually made of durable acrylic. By law, in the UK the plate at the front is white, and the plate at the back is yellow. Mercedes World is at Brooklands motor racing circuit in Weybridge, Surrey, not far southwest of London.
The 25 O number plate is the most expensive ever sold in the UK. In California the number plate "MD" sold for $12,000,000 dollars, so you do have the same ultra rich snobs as the UK
The world's most expensive number plate is *F1,* and is located in my city *Bradford.* It's owned by *Afzal Kahn* who I've seen drive his rare cars past my house a few times in recent years, although I haven't noticed him for a while. *Afzal Kahn* and *Naveed "Barugzai" Khan* (no relation as shown by the different spellings) are both multi millionaires car dealers and car modifiers who have celebrity customers, and have both had TV series.
The Mercedez Benz World is southwest of London in Weybridge, UK on part of the Brooklands Racecourse, an early 2.7+ mile banked racetrack that operated 1907 to 1939. During World War 1 an aircraft factory was located on the west part inside the track along with the Brookland aerodrome; aircraft production resumed during World War 2 and the area now industrial factories. The airfield was in the middle portion and now part of the test track and park. Separated by the River Wey, the east area included the pit area & straight away, redeveloped as office buildings. Most of the elevated banked racetrack is still visible on google maps but mostly natural vegetation. An aircraft museum with displays is located next to Mercedes Benz World.
MADE FROM Acrylic is our number plates, not mettle. Hence why they do not rust and have to replaced. Plus being Acrylic (a form of Plexiglas) means snow and sand can not easily stick to it, like US Plates. We Brits know how to make stuff that lasts.
Mercedes-Benz World is in Byfleet, Surrey, by the old Brooklands motor racing racetrack. It's walking distance from the assisted living complex where my mother lived the last three years of her life. While Byfleet and New Haw is probably the nearest railway station, Weybridge has more trains and it's easier to get a taxi. From London, catch trains to either station from Waterloo.
There is no need to register your car every year in the UK so once your car has a registration number its fixed for the life of the car, you can replace that plate with a personalised plate that you own, and if you sell the car on in the future you can return it to the original registration and continue to use your personalised plate on a new car.
All UK Number plates are reflective and made with a metal back and have perspex covering the front. The white plates are for the front of the car and the yellow ones are for the rear of the vehicle. This is so the plates can be read at night. Hope this helps 👍
yellow on the rear white on the front its a prestige thing in the uk all cars have to have a number plate with the exception of the king these are issued to the dealers so when you buy a new car they will often give you a choice of number plate this stays with the car through its life time and is not transferable until the car is registered as scrap then the dvla can resell it as a private plate the less numbers or letters increase its value the combinations of the numbers and letters can make some worth more than others in theory you could get the number plate UK 8055Y this can be read as UK BOSSY and so has more value what cant be done is to buy what you specifically want on your number plate you can only ask what they have or the nearest match they will not issue a plate because its what you want they are the equivalent to your vanity plates the difference is your are state plates and you can get what ever you want on them this is not the case here so they can go for a few hundred dollars into the thousands owners of the number plate can resell them but the car it was on has to be re registered often with its original plate
My Aunt bought the personalise number plate 'SAS H2O' for £500 pounds. The first 3 letters were the initials of her name and the H2O bit just appealed to her. She didn't buy the physical number plate. She bought the legal right to use that sequence of letters and numbers.
Yes, these ARE the plates. The white background ones go on the front of the car, the yellow background ones on the back of the car. These "cherished" plates start around £250 but the sky is the limit when it comes to the more special ones, for example "X 1" or any two - character plate. There is a big market for these here in the UK.
As someone who had a private plate bought for me for a birthday. I’m glad to say that the lowest prices start at around £157. Then once you get a letter/ certificate of authorisation to use from the DVLA, then you can register your car against the plate. If you change your car, you have to go back on line and de-register the car and pay £80 to transfer it to your new car. You give the certificate then to the garage who makes up the plate. Or sometimes you can take the plate off, but the old car will then be registered with a different number plate, dependant on its age and year. Our current plates use a suffix (based on the county) and a number. Our plates change twice a year (March & Sept). So March would be 24 and in Sept would be 74. So we know which 6 month period the car was registered. Next year it’ll be 25 and 75. We started the new numbering system back in 2001. Which actually started in Sept and was 51. Etc.
When you remove your personalised plate from your car to put onto another car the car that originally had the personalised plate is returned to its original number plate. I have done this and never had to pay the £80 transfer fee. Just went onto dvla website and did it all online and changed the plates the same day.
Yup, I'd have to agree with you there. It seems (to me) that many of the sequences of numbers/letters are so obscure, they can't mean anything to the casual observer, and only have any really special meaning to the owner. So why put it on public display for all to see, unless it's just a projection of the owner's ego?
@@jameswiglesworth5004 Insanity? A plate like the 5I NGH one is a very safe investment. There are shrewd entrepreneurs who play the plate market like art collectors, with a keen eye on resale value in the future, never intending to re-register their own cars.
Pretty simple process in the UK. Cars are issued with plates so you don’t buy them (unless you want a personalised one). You don’t need to go to a physical place for any car stuff. Insurance is done on phone or online, car tax is paid online and getting/renewing licenses is via a paper (posted to DVLA) or online form. All that queuing I see online at your DMV is a foreign concept here. If you buy or sell a car, again it’s just paperwork you send off from home and you just organise insurance online for the new car to start the day you buy it.
Wish I still had the registration that was on a 1961 Mini I owned in 69, 5 UPD, not the first time that Surrey C C had issued it. Back then they couldn't be sold, they either went back to the issuing authority when the vehicle scrapped or one could transfer it to another vehicle registered to one, that vehicles' registration going back to the issuing authority. When DVLC now DVLA was set up and took over from County Councils was the first that registration numbers could be sold, they later cashed in by auctioning off suitable ones.
I've been out of UK for 22 years, but when my Dad bought a Ford Prefect and then an Anglia in about 1950+, the number plates would consist of 3 letters and 3 numbers. x'PO' and x'PX' referred to West Sussex, if memory serves. Then later came a final letter, referring to the car's first registration year. The suffix 'A' told you that a car was newer than a car with 'F' for example. Ah, the days of a cranking handle in January, ( choke out) ,....and flip out indicators!
I still remember the registration plate of my dad's car. As a young child I was told to memorise it in case I lost track of my parents at an event for example. It was XXM 122 a two tone blue Austin Cambridge. Also my first car was MLL 916D a red Austin Mini.
In the UK a plate is issued to your car when it is new. It stays on the car for life. Unless you purchase a private plate. These are from older cars which have been scrapped. Also you can buy an old car with title and good plate and transfer it to your car.
I have had my personal plate for 20 odd years, it has been on around 10 different cars, yes it is vanity or just a bit of fun. When i first got it it went on my MG, my initials are WKC so i have M6 WKC at the time it cost £175.
Mercedes benz world is near me in Weybridge surrey near the famous Brooklands race track (no longer fully operational) and the Brooklands aviation museum.
'A 1' is the classic example of what is probably the best number plate you can buy, and it would also be the most expensive number plate you can buy, being worth in excess of 10 million pounds if it were up to sale.
Few bits of info for you. Our plates are plastic not metal. (Although they used to be metal up to the 80s, and some old cars still have metal, but since then they’re plastic). We have a front and a rear plate on our cars. Front must be white, rear must be yellow. All cars have a random registration number assigned from new by DVLA (our version of DMV), but you can buy a different registration as in this video. Cheapest ones go for around £100 plus £90 admin fee. When you buy a registration you only buy the right to use that on your car, DVLA still own it and can retract it at any point. Registration investment is big business. There are lots of companies just trading in personalised plates. My mum bought me a personalised plate for my 18th birthday. (Back in 1990). She paid £120 for it. I still use it today and I’ve had offers for over £35k for it from registration number trading companies. I’ll never sell it until I stop driving as my mum isn’t with us anymore and every time I get in my car I think of her.
An interesting note Steve. Cities in the UK issue registration plates when you first register your car from new, and they have some letters from the city and a series of numbers. For instance, Kingston upon Hull. Or Hull City have AT, KH and RH are allocated to Hull City. So the Royal Household cars bear HRH with numbers 1 to 6 or may even be more. In general three letters and 2-3 numbers with a year letter used to be normal. Then they from bean an "A" Reg. Would tell you the age of the car and where it was originally registered. The Later Registration plates have two Numbers as the registration year. My car is Registered in 2011 and it has 60 in the middle which means it was a 2010-2011 Reg. Plate. The royal plates would be worth millions and are from my home town.
In the village where I live a few years ago there were the following 3 personalised plates 1) H1 SPY 2) H1 MUM & 3) H1 DOC I often wondered who owned them None of these are still around so they were either sold or the owners moved
In the uk we have to have reg plates on the front and back of the car. White is for front, yellow is for the rear of the car. Our registration numbers are in effect unique identifiers using a pre-determined format. It's not the plastic thats expensive, its the arrangement of the letters and numbers which by coincidence create a word or some meaning which would have a special meaning to the person wanting to put it on there car, I.E Name, or reference to a type or car etc
Uk plates are reflective plastic, you have to have a white plate on the front and a yellow one at the rear, motorcycles only require a plate at the rear
Motorcycles used to have a number plate that followed the contour of the front mudguard, with the registration on the right and left side. Unfortunately due to the plate being metal some fatal and terrible accidents happened due to the slicing action of the plate. So only rear number plates now.
Depends on whether you're quicker than the market, when I first became a Radio Amateur the authorities introduced the ability to request a three letter group within the callsign, so as my initials are WJF I applied for M5WJF, this was a relatively new callsign class, so when I won some money on the lottery with a £1 stake, I applied to the DVLA for a registration plate M5 WJF, because DVLA were behind the curve, they were only charging the minimum of £250, when at the time vanity number plates were going for thousands. So, free vanity Radio Callsign + cheap vanity Car Registration Number that can be transferred to any vehicle I own.
In addition to the other comments. The UK has a fixed format for plates. They have a maximum of seven characters. Before 2001, the format was LLLNNNL or LNNNLLL eg ABC123D, or D345EFG but did not have to contain all 7. So A1 or B3CDE would be legally available. The intitial or final SINGLE letter dictated the year of first registration. Commonly, two of the letters would indicate where the car was made.. eg LO for London, BR for Bristol etc. After March 2001, the format changed to LLNNLLL eg AB01CDE, where the numbers indicate the year. The UK also has March and September registration points, so, for example, in 2001 the numbers changed to 51 to indicate the car was registered after September. Basically, if you look at a standard UK plate, you immediately know when and where that car was first made/registered. Personal plates cannot make a car appear newer. So you can't put a LL01LLL plate or later on a pre-2001 car for example. Even if it's "personalised" eg AB01DAN on a 2000 model car. Certain other plates are actually de-facto banned, as the DVLA will not allow certain ones to be sold if they spell, or approximate certain words. Eg NAZ1 HIT13R or RAP15T. That said, PEN15, PEN1S and similar iterations did get through (the former used to "live" in North London and I'd see it quite often). The Chinese market has made any plates with H or 8 in it quite expensive, as 8 is considered very lucky. The running joke was that rather than personalise your plate, just legally change your name... That only costs £49.32. Of course, being "Mr John LD51GXF" might come with its own issues! 😂
The company I used to work for owned the number A1. Originally on a gaffer`s car it it was shunted around various test fleet cars and was on a couple of Rover V8s. Last I remember of it was on a Wolseley 2200, probably worth many multiples of the value of the car.
A friend's brother who has the initials AO bought the numberplate H11MAO. There was nothing particularly special about that number plate, and it followed the standard format of the time. But with careful positioning of spaces, and also of a black screw cover over one of the fixing screws, he got it to read "HI I'M AO"!
@@crobulous9581The screw was already between the 1 and the M (not between the two 1s), he just had a black cap added to it to make it look like an apostrophe. That said, I'm not about to jump into my time machine and go back 34 years to tell him what he did was illegal! 😊
Plates are made from Perspex. white on the front and yellow on the back. Cars over 40 years old [historic vehicles] can have black plates with white letters.
6:00 why do people do it? Why do people pay for designer clothes when any old shirt or pair of jeans will do? It's because it has a label to show wealth I guess. And the same with 'private plates' in the UK. It's visible wealth I guess.
Unlike the US, where two different states can have the same numberplate, every plate un the UK is unique. Personal plates are considered status symbols here. Getting one with your name or initials can be very expensive, even if it is just an ego massager. Plates here are generally plastic. Also, white plates are for the front of a vehicle, and yellow is for the rear.
Why do people spend that much on a number plate? Because they can! For just the same reason that people buy obscenely expensive art or wines or anything else - there's an element of investment, and an element of showing off about the fact that you can afford to pay £300k for something that most people just go for the free one. Standard number plates since 1963 have had an identifier for when the car was made and where it was first registered encoded in it, and every car is issued with one when the first owner buys it. (You may get a choice of a few, the dealership will buy a stack but may not assign them to individual cars until the sale goes through, but you don't get to make it up yourself). Personalised plates can then be registered as an alias, to be used in place of the standard plate issued. A personalised plate must conform to certain rules: it can't pretend to be a registration year that is newer than the car itself (eg if your car was built in 2021, you couldn't put a plate on it that implies it was built in 2024), it can't include words deemed offensive by the licensing authority (including when numbers _look like_ letters, so you couldn't have C-zero-CK, for example), and the letters and numbers have to fit certain patterns (eg you could have AAA111 but not A1A1A1). If you buy a personalised plate, you can then keep the plate when you change your car and attach it to your new car, whereas normal people have to memorise a new plate when they get a new car!
In the UK your car comes with a number plate, which remains on the car for its lifetime. You can buy personalised plates eg: your initials and a number. Number plates in the UK have to be made of polycarbon or plastic. Metal plates are illegal.
Cars come with the right to use a number plate, but you have to buy the physical plates, its added to your purchase price for new car, along with road tax, and delivery charge. Note Metal plates may have be fitted originally and would remain legal, not sure when they stopped making them.
The video title is a bit misleading. The plate is not the expensive part it is the actual numbers and letters (the registration). When a car is first registered, it is allocated a registration number. That normally stays with the car for life. Incidentally, the registration number not only helps to identify the car, it also shows the age of the car, to within a 6 month period. The different colours denote whether the plate is displayed on the front or rear of the car. With white for the front and yellow for the rear. You can, however, change your cars registration number, but you can't put a registration that says the car is new on an old car. You can, however, put an old registration on a newer car. Incidentally, the government owns the registration. All you are doing is purchasing the right to use that registration number.
As previous comments say it isn’t the piece of plastic you buy, it’s the exclusive use of that combination of characters. It could be a reference to the car itself, or a famous example of the car you have, either in real life or a film (like putting a number plate that says B0ND 1 on an Aston Martin), or a reference to a name, a celebrity, a place, a country, or a cool catch phrase or something. A relative of mine has a personalised plate has the name of a Scottish Glen in it , Glen Esk. The plate is G1 ESK.
to help dispel some of your confusion, Steve, each car in the UK must display the licence number both on the front and the back of the car. The front number plate is black letters and numbers on a white background, the rear number plate is the same black letters and numbers on a yellow background
1. Our number plates arent differentiated by city/state etc... a UK plate is a UK plate and that plate is registered to the car. The owner of said registration plate is liable for any parking fines, speeding etc. 2. Because our plates arent different for each city/district... having a personalised one is harder to do and can be more expensive. 3. Ours are plastic, not metal. But the ones on the vid were replicas 😊
From our DVLA a standard personal number plate cost from £80 to £250 depending on what you want of course that is. The world's most expensive number plate was sold for £7.5 million in 2021. White number plate goes on the front of the car and yellow on the back and all made from plastic.
The world's most expensive number plate is *F1,* and is located in my city *Bradford.* It's owned by *Afzal Kahn* who I've seen drive his rare cars past my house a few times in recent years, although I haven't noticed him for a while. *Afzal Kahn* and *Naveed "Barugzai" Khan* (no relation as shown by the different spellings) are both multi millionaires car dealers and car modifiers who have celebrity customers, and have both had TV series.
A lot of people have private plates to hide the age of their cars, standard plates show the year of registration. We can buy cheap private plates starting at a few hundred pounds.
Personalised plates are very common in the UK especially in more affluent areas, there are plate spotters who go around looking at peoples number plates and post adverts on car windscreens looking to purchase you`re plate if you`ve got an interesting one, there are also various on-line and magazine columns where you can view registrations for sale....Personal plates or cherished plates as they are sometime known are big business and you can buy one fairly cheap too, theres a bit of luck involved getting the numbers on a plate to match in with you`re initials or surname. ...There is two plates on every car by law, the white plate goes on the front and the yellow goes on the back, the plate has to be a specified size and the numbers/letters have to be a certain height and spacing with no other advertising etc on the plate like what you would see in the usa, also the both plates have to be lit up after dark using the cars lighting system.
You get get a personalised plate for as little as £250 but they're often not that personalised and are in a standard format e.g AB12 ABC or S123 MEL or TNW 603M or something similar, you certainly pay more for something like DEN 22 or GAW 123
I have a "personal" plate on my car in the UK, never had one before. As others have explained it is not the physical plate that costs the money, it is the entitlement to use it. Mine was an inexpensive plate, and bought directly from the DVLA. All I got for the money was a certificate. A pair of plates (yellow for the rear and white for the front) costs a minimal amount to have made up. In principle I can keep transferring my plate from car to car forever or sell it on. (admin charges may apply). A friend has a plate that has one number and two letters, he bought it a long time ago, it is now widely thought to be "worth" over £100,000. There are times when I wish my car was less noticeable, but only when I have done a bad lane change or similar. (not often). A lot of plates only mean something to the owner, but once in a while I do see a plate that actually looks cool.
Hi Steve and Lyndsey. These auctions are organised by or for the DVLA. All vehicles in the UK have to be registered on 1st purchase and that registration stays with the vehicle. You can pay to change the registration but it has to fit specific requirements. Certain plates contain a sequence of letters and numbers which might look like a name, initials or other sequence and pretentious individuals will pay sometimes silly amounts to own that number on their vehicle. The more unique the registration the more the cost. It’s the ownership of the registration not the piece of plastic (white on front yellow on rear of vehicle). If you change the vehicle you can transfer the registration to your new one for a fee I believe.
Hey Steve and Lindsey. If you buy a used car in the UK the number plate that's on it stays on it. They don't change unless you want to personalize it. Plus you get 2 a yellow on the back and white on the front.
Vehicles here have white plates on the front and yellow at the rear - normally made of plastic. The format has changed several times as more vehicles are registered and with the more recent combinations of 6 or 7 letters and numbers, you can use the letters to spell a name or some other word or meaningful sequence of numbers and letters. You buy the right to register that plate on your vehicle, not the physical plate. It's big business, but certain sequences won't be released for sale if they are potentially offensive. It's not legal to change the number fonts or spacing of the letters and numbers or to insert screw caps in certain places to change a character (for example put a screw cap between 1 and 1 to make an 'H' but a lot of people do!
the cost to get a personalised number plate in UK starts at £154 you can only have it if it is unique within the rules of what letters numbers are allowed eg cant have letters I, O or Q because they can be easily confused with number 1 and 0 then the cost goes up for special ones that have more meaning. once you buy the number it is yours for life and you and move it from car to car when you replace the car if you want. At a cost to reregister the new car but you dont need to buy the number again.
Mercedes Benz world is great fun, there is lots to see and do there. British cars have 2 number plates a white on the front and a yellow one on the back, and they are plastic.
In the late 1990’s in Belfast I saw a car several times with the number plate TR1 MBL3, so the owner must either have been called Trimble, or he was a supporter of the then Ulster Unionist’s leader, David Trimble.
These are also good for hiding the age of your car because uk standard license plates all have the year of manufacture on like EG21 XMN means it is a 2021 car, so if someone has an older car and picks up a personalised plate for £500 without a date on it you can hide your car age
A difference between the USA and the UK is that generally a number plate is registered to a car. You buy a car and it comes with that number plate. If you own a private plate when you buy or sell the car you have to do the paperwork to change the plates over.
One of the best personalized plates I ever saw was on a Jaguar, just off the Kings Road in London: OPE6 01L (OPEC Oil). I guess the owner was a big-wig in the business.
The current layout of AB12 CDE was introduced in 2001. From 1983 until then the plate format was A 123 BCD with the first Letter denoting the year the vehicle was first registered, and before then it was ABC 123 D with the last number being the registration year. The really prized plates are those from before then, when the plates were either 1-3 letter followed by 1-4 numbers, or vice versa with nothing denoting the date. As all plates have to have been originally issued by the DVLA (our DMV) to get a plate like 1 D, VIP 1, ABC 123, or JB 007, not only must the plate have been in continuous use, but someone has to be willing to sell it. Numbers are deleted if the car is scrapped and the letters are random increasing the rarity of significant combinations, so much like anything else that's rare or antiquated people covet them and they soon surge to ridiculous levels. Simon Cowell has an Aston Martin with the plate MI AML (My Aston Martin Lagonda) and I'm sure it wasn't cheap.
The 25 0 plate has a current asking p[rice of £750,000. Both X1 and G1 number plates have an asking price of £1 million each. The number plate F1 has an asking price of £10 million.
Steve, you can get a personal plate from about £75, but then you have to pay The DVLA (our version of your DMV) a £80 registration fee and then pay again to get the plates made - one white for the front, one yellow for the back (but with black characters)…
Normal car registration fee in UK is £55. This gets you the registration number you then pay the car dealer to produce the physical plates which are about £10 -20
I D ended up on a bently bentayga ,I have a personalised plate I think it cost £85 it was a present.the difference in colour is because the front plate has to have a white background and yellow on the rear
The craziest thing about all this is the fact that people will spend all this money for something that they technically won't own. You are buying the right to use the registration but that right can be stripped by the DVLA if you are caught misusing it, by rearranging the characters or spacing for example.
Two important points:
You aren't buying the physical plate, you're buying the right to use that particular sequence of numbers. The physical plate itself is worthless, anyone can print one, what's valuable is the legal right to use it.
In the UK, you can't have any arbitrary sequence of letters and numbers on a plate. The vehicle registration authority (the DVLA) only issue plates with particular patterns. So, plates which both fit the current (or a historical) pattern and say something interesting are very rare - that's why they are so expensive.
I would have thought that was obvious since anybody with a screwdriver could steal it.
Also in the US if 8m correct you register plates based on states where as all plates in the UK are different for every car.
The US is so big you can't do that.
So could have 1D 50 times for 1 of each state
A few years ago in the village where I live there were 3 personalised plates
1) H1 MUM
2) H1 SPY &
3) H1 DOC
@@susansmiles2242 Rotherham's registration code was/or still is ET, Rotherham still owns a few plates ET 1 ET 2 and so on, only ever used for ViP's
as there are also all different, each is unique? as you dont have state/province plates where it could be I D of london, I D of... dont know the areas. you all have 1 plate style? therefore unique. only 1.
My brother bought a personalized number for his own car 25 years ago for £180 and it’s now valued at £26k
I think I'm right in saying, we haven't had metal plates since the 1960s and white plates go on the front of the vehicle and yellow on the rear.
Black with white letters were the standard until decades ago and they’re still road legal
Older (classic) vehicles can still have metal plates (black background and silver text) on if they meet certain criteria, but all new vehicles since the 1970s or so, must by law have yellow and white. Although they can be metal, just painted.
@orwellboy1958 ... Metal number plates are still 100% legal in the UK, most cars are supplied new with plastic number plates but you are legally entitled to swap them for metal plates as long as they are the correct colours for front and back plates.
Nowadays the plates are made of metal usually aluminium. White on the front yellow on the back ..
@@TwoMetresTall Not true, any 40 year old Historic Vehicle Class Tax Exempt vehicle can use Silver Letters over Black Background Metal Number plates, whether they were first issued modern colour plates or not.
You're not paying for the physical item, rather the actual registration itself. Plates have to be unique across the entire UK. So if you're trying to get a really in-demand sequence of characters, you're not buying it from "the government" (they've all already been sold) you're effectively buying it from the current owner. So the price is as high as someone is willing to pay at an auction. Ultimately, personalised plates are a status symbol. you can get personalised plates cheaper where only some of the characters are personalised, 'KY70 DAN' would be far cheaper than 'DAN'
Ah, okay! That explanation makes a little more sense then. :)
I was looking to buy a custom plate I wanted, days later someone put it on a new Audi ...
@@reactingtomyrootssome are smart as buy a car for cheap just for the plate but not tell the seller that's what they do
Hi Steve and Lindsay
The reason why plates are white on the front and yellow on the back is so other drivers can quickly tell if they're looking at the front or back of the vehicle. This in turn allows drivers on the road to weigh up the likelihood that a vehicle is either moving away from them, or coming towards them.
Hi Steve and Lindsey! The MCL 720S plate originally was a regular plate that would have been issued between August 1977 and July 1978. But now McLaren have launched their 720S, it is now valuable.
Max Bygraves (English singer and performer) had the number plate MB1, and was always being badgered by Mercedes to sell it to them; he never did. I don't know what happened to it when he died.
RR21 SLS (Reacting Roots - Steve Lindsay Sophia) is currently £400
Or R002OTS is £800
RR1 is on a Rolls Royce Phantom!
I liked Noddys car, with BRRRM on the front 😂
Best one I ever saw was CYN 1C on a white Austin Maxi belonging to a Lloyds underwriter (in the '60s). I also saw a Rolls Royce parked in the garage of NatWest Bank with the registration BUM 1 (the owner obviously had a sense of humour).
Ok - quite a few questions in the video. I’ll try to answer them all but the other commenters have already covered everything. Hope this is helpful nonetheless.
1 - yellow plates go on the back, white plates go on the front of the car
2 - UK has single organisation to register vehicles, it is not split by state. So many millions of cars on uk roads all need unique identifiers.
3 - The number plate a car comes with (from the factory), stays with the car for life (or unless a private plate is put on later).
4 - A private plate can be put on many cars during its lifetime, but only on a single car. It’s not uncommon to someone to change cars every year but the car reg would always be the same.
5 - a normal registration mark tells anyone how old the car was as they contain a year (or a letter for older cars which identifies the age)
6 - shorter registrations (eg 2ABC) are much older eg were originally on a car in say 1960 or earlier, and have been used on the owners. Therefore worth more.
6 - its absolutely all about vanity - standing out from the crowd
Oh, also the plate doesn’t get changed or re-registered every year like in the states. And you don’t need to put stickers on etc.
Thank you! Appreciate you taking the time to explain :) Does help us understand the process a bit better.
@@TwoMetresTall The plate lasts as long as the car does. Nothing else goes on it.
6 - I'll have know I resemble that remark!
@@dinger40 me too mate 😀
Currently, the most expensive registration is P7, and it was sold to a buyer in Dubai for the record-breaking sum of $15 million.
A car is assigned a number plate when it is first sold. That number usually stays with the car for its life, and is in the format "XX23 YYY" where XX represents the geographic area where it was sold, the "23" represents the year of sale, and the YYY are random letters.
The number actually tells you which half of the year it was registered.
23 means first half of the year
73 means second half of the year.
Second half number is the Year + 50.
2023, 73.
Going back to 2013 it was 63.
In 2003 it was 53.
@@MostlyPennyCat I was just keeping it simple for them. But in any case you are wrong - it's even more complex than your explanation. A 73 plate is not for the 2nd half of the year 2023, it covers the period September 2023 to February 2024. And a 23 plate covers March 2023 to August 2023.
In the UK, each car is registered at the point of sale. The plate currently includes the area and year the car was registered.
So each car is allocated a sequence of letters and numbers. That is all the registration plate represents. It does not include any extra information, such as owner, insurance etc.. An authority (DVLA) maintains a database of registration vs. owner. Another maintains registration vs. insurance, and another for the yearly MoT (Ministry of Transport) Test vs. the registration.
Every number plate allocated since the introduction of number plates can be brought (I believe) - but as another commenter mentioned, it's a private sale as the plate belongs to the car that you own. They can be brought for vanity reasons, but most people just stick with what the car was allocated. Typically they are sold with the car, though you can keep them and transfer it to another vehicle.
Physically, they are now made from Acrylic (thick) and white are for the front of the car and yellow for the rear - they (unless original old plates - they may even be black and white) are all a standard size and font. Driving without plates on the front and/or rear is an offence. This is probably to ensure that ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition) works easily.
Some people have custom plates (with custom fonts etc..) are allowed to be used on private land, but again, it's an offence to use them on public roads.
Side note: the driver is responsible to ensure the car is legal, insured, MoT tested and they have a valid license. These do not need to be carried, as if you're stopped, the relevant databases can be checked by the police (from the comfort of their car).
Mercedes world is in Brooklands very close to Weybridge Surrey. Now Brooklands is very famous race circuit back in the day. Check it out.
Yes, worth a video on it's own. It was also important in the history of aviation and has a museum there today for both motor racing and aviation.
The museum is amazing and also has Concorde experiences. One of the planes on display was raised from the bottom of Loch Ness and has been restored.
Brooklands also produced thousands of Hurricane and Wellington aircraft in WW2, a superb museum there, right next to Mercedes Benz World.
@@simoneleaver7374Vickers Wellington, built right there at Brooklands, one of only two in existence.
Any car registered in the uk is issued with a registration number. That number stays with the car for its life. When the car is sold the registration number moves with the car. Privet plates can be used but the car still holds its original registration number (it does not need to be displayed if you have a private plate displayed). You are not buying the plastic plate but the title to that plate. You can then transfer that plate to any vehicle as long as it does not suggest the vehicle is newer than it is. (To explain how the registration tells you the age of the car is a whole other subject) you can remove it from said vehicle and revert back to its original registration number. The reason for white and yellow plates, white displayed on the front and yellow on the back.
In england we have white plates on front and yellow plate at back
Metal number plates stopped being used in 1975, when the UK moved to black text on highly reflective yellow for rear of vehicles. And black text on white for front of a vehicle.
Before then we had white text on black number plates.
The use of plastic number plates which laminated back plate the text layer and then a transparent cover layer became common in the 1990s .
The first ever UK number plate was 1 A .... when you buy a car the number plate comes with it. You can pay a fee to transfer the older plate to the newer car.
In 2024 the normal format is AA 72 AAA
Two letters two numbers and three letters.
The two numbers indicate the year that the plate was issued.
There are two pairs of numbers for each year.
In the UK we do not have to pay every year for our registration plates ,we do pay road tax ,the more gas hungry or big your vehicle is the more road tax you pay .
which means if you buy private and expensive number plate it is yours for life, it can be transferred to another vehicle of your choosing and it can be inherited .
in Jersey in the Channel Islands, all our number plates start with a "J" and then it is just numbers after. my friend has a WWII Ford Jeep called "D-Day Dolly" and the number plate is J61944 = June 6 1944.
An interesting thing in Jersey (as a fellow islander) is that I believe its still not allowed to just sell the rights to a plate, it has to be on a car and in use to be valid or it just goes back into the pool of possible reg numbers to be issued on new cars.
So at auction you see some right old bangers go for loads of money just because they've got an old or interesting plate. I know someone who was a bit cheeky and knew their plate happened to be sought after, and advertised their car for sale with the registration number prominently displayed... then had the registration switched to their new car before the new owner came to pick it up! Luckily they hadn't paid too much over the value of the vehicle just for the plates and weren't too miffed, otherwise I can see someone who really just wanted the plates refusing to actually take the car.
Hi guys these are private plates which are transferable from vehicle to vehicle. The white ones have to be fitted to the front of vehicle yellow for the rear. We have several companies where these can be purchased.
yellow goes on the back and white on the front.
We don't pay annual registration fees in the UK although we do pay a road fund licence which is referred to as road tax.
In the uk the number stays with the car for its life, no matter how many owners have it. You can get it changed for a personalised plate but it costs money as you can see.
About 20 years ago, I was keeping an eye out for an ordinary number - S108 HAN. That is because it was a ready made 'vanity plate' for my sister, Siobhán. However others were clearly of the same mind as when it came up, it went for £52,500.
Most people don't have a private plate. They take the number that is on the car when it has been registered by the dealer they buy it from. And that number will stay on the car until it is scrapped. You can get one for £100 or less, which may mean something to you, but noone else.
And in the UK, the white plate is for the front and the yellow is for the rear.
White on the front, yellow on the rear. A friends sister had one on her Merc in the mid 80's, didn't cost her much at the time. She was approached by the manager of a very famous Norwegian band asking to buy it. The plate was 1 AHA , I'm sure you can work out the rest.
You are buying the rights to use the number. No numbers are just made up, they are historic plates. In other words the very first plate issued was A1 probably over a hundred years ago, so all vanity plates just happen to say or mean something. If a car was scrapped without transferring the number, that number is gone forever which makes these (very old) plates more valuable because of scarcity. White plates go on the front, yellow plates go on the rear. I have a personal plate on my car (it says by business name), but it was only £800. If I was a rich man, that 1D plate would be perfect because it looks like my initials.
That's not strictly true. Sometimes the DVLA auction off never before issued registration numbers.
But would you want people to think that you’re a One Direction fan lol
@@DavidDoyleOutdoors 😂😂
DVLA will reissue a registration as an age related registration for an imported used vehicle when an age related registration is requested. Registrations beginning with Q were temporary registrations usually issued to Embassies or vehicles that owners were going to export to their house abroad.
We bought a 6 digit plate last year that had never been issued before. The dvla release new sets from time to time, other than the yearly prefix ones
Acrylic Registration Number Plates. White on the front and yellow on the back. These follow with the car. When you sell a car, the Registration Number goes with the car unless you physically transfer it. We don't renew them yearly.
With expensive plates, it's essentially super wealthy people showing off. For instance, you might buy a car for £500k and think, "What would set it apart?" So, you get a matching plate for £100k. Meanwhile, the everyday person might spend £250 on a plate with their initials to personalize their car a bit more.
Most vanity registration numbers come from Northern Ireland as NI uses a different format and letters to GB number plates, generally 3 letters followed with between 1 and 4 numbers.
Ordinary plates have the first two letters denoting the area it came from, the next two letters indicate the date of registration. The last three letters are unique to that vehicle where the first 4 characters are not. White in the front, yellow at the back.
In the UK, every number plate is 1 of a kind. And they are only issued on a brand new car. you cant go to the DVLA and get a custom plate the only way is to buy it from the owner of the plate.
So for example, the plate "1 D" was issued by the DVLA to the 48th car ever licensed on UK roads.
There’s a difference between UK and US plates. In the US the plates belong to the owner ( I still have mine from when I lived in NJ) while in the UK the plate belongs to the vehicle. You can keep the number but have to go through a process to do so.
loved watching your confusion and misunderstanding of what was going on 😁. In the UK, we don't get to specify what number plate we want. So if you want a personal number plate you have to keep your eye out for a plate coming up for sale which by chance happens to have a combination of lettes and numbers which could be read as your name or initials. So wasn't surprised to see one of the plates held up at beginning of video, 51 NGH, went for a lot of money because if you minimise the space between the numbers and lettes it reads 51NGH which is pretty damn close to SINGH, a common Sikh surname. Since these numbers plates are unique, there is intense competition for those wanting to acquire that particular plate, which of course, drives up the price
@@jinxvrs true enough !!!
the other reason for people buying plates is to hide the age of vehicle. like my car is marked 20 for year 2020 but my plate is from 1970 j reg, J111 BOB. not my real plate .but mine cost £150
In the US you get a new plate when registering your vehicle. In UK the plate is fitted to the car when new and never changes until the day it is scrapped. If you get a personalised plate the original number is put on suspension and you use your personalised plate. When you sell that car the personalised number plate is put on a retainer and the car reverts to the original number. Uk plates are white background on the front of the vehicle and yellow on the rear.
That 1D plate used to be on an Austin Metro at a house that I walked past daily, for years.
One day it disappeared and this video is the first time I’ve seen it in yonks!
Yes you can buy personal/private License plates at auction but they do have to be registered with the DVLA (Like your DMV) before they go onto any vehicle, which also has to be linked to the plate.
The number plate "F1" was sold to British automotive designer Afzal Kahn for '£440,625' in 2008. He has stated that he would sell it for approximately £15 million.
I live in the UK and I own a Mini. I have a "stealth" personal plate which means it just looks like a regular plate but only I know that it spells out my initials AND my birthday! (GJ 13DEC) ..... a bargain at only £175. :)
The best personal plate I saw was a few years ago..... again it looked perfectly normal and probably didn't cost very much: a girl driving a BMW with the plate BEG 4 11T.. Also there was a local elderly gentleman called Mr. O'Brian: he was always getting hounded by Star Wars fans.... his plate was OB 1.
My plate has my wife's and mines first names' initials followed by the year we were married.
We didn't buy it, it was just in the car we bought.
We actually didn't notice for years 😂
All new plates are a composite plastic - white on the front; yellow on the back of the car. ( and are reflective for safety) These kind of auctions generate profits for the DVLA. which goes towards their budget - reducing the costs to the taxpayer. You can find these auctions in many local and some national newspapers.
The plates are usually made of durable acrylic. By law, in the UK the plate at the front is white, and the plate at the back is yellow.
Mercedes World is at Brooklands motor racing circuit in Weybridge, Surrey, not far southwest of London.
Thanks for that, I was wondering where it was.
@@AnthonyValentine-vm1yc I'm a little surprised it's not somewhere near Stuttgart! Lol
Perhaps they have something similar closer to their home...
The 25 O number plate is the most expensive ever sold in the UK. In California the number plate "MD" sold for $12,000,000 dollars, so you do have the same ultra rich snobs as the UK
oik
The world's most expensive number plate is *F1,* and is located in my city *Bradford.*
It's owned by *Afzal Kahn* who I've seen drive his rare cars past my house a few times in recent years, although I haven't noticed him for a while.
*Afzal Kahn* and *Naveed "Barugzai" Khan* (no relation as shown by the different spellings) are both multi millionaires car dealers and car modifiers who have celebrity customers, and have both had TV series.
The Mercedez Benz World is southwest of London in Weybridge, UK on part of the Brooklands Racecourse, an early 2.7+ mile banked racetrack that operated 1907 to 1939. During World War 1 an aircraft factory was located on the west part inside the track along with the Brookland aerodrome; aircraft production resumed during World War 2 and the area now industrial factories. The airfield was in the middle portion and now part of the test track and park. Separated by the River Wey, the east area included the pit area & straight away, redeveloped as office buildings. Most of the elevated banked racetrack is still visible on google maps but mostly natural vegetation. An aircraft museum with displays is located next to Mercedes Benz World.
I knew of a guy called Graham Mason in UK, and I saw had the number plate G MA50N on his sports car.
MADE FROM
Acrylic is our number plates, not mettle. Hence why they do not rust and have to replaced. Plus being Acrylic (a form of Plexiglas) means snow and sand can not easily stick to it, like US Plates. We Brits know how to make stuff that lasts.
Mercedes-Benz World is in Byfleet, Surrey, by the old Brooklands motor racing racetrack. It's walking distance from the assisted living complex where my mother lived the last three years of her life. While Byfleet and New Haw is probably the nearest railway station, Weybridge has more trains and it's easier to get a taxi. From London, catch trains to either station from Waterloo.
There is no need to register your car every year in the UK so once your car has a registration number its fixed for the life of the car, you can replace that plate with a personalised plate that you own, and if you sell the car on in the future you can return it to the original registration and continue to use your personalised plate on a new car.
All UK Number plates are reflective and made with a metal back and have perspex covering the front.
The white plates are for the front of the car and the yellow ones are for the rear of the vehicle.
This is so the plates can be read at night.
Hope this helps 👍
yellow on the rear white on the front its a prestige thing in the uk all cars have to have a number plate with the exception of the king these are issued to the dealers so when you buy a new car they will often give you a choice of number plate this stays with the car through its life time and is not transferable until the car is registered as scrap then the dvla can resell it as a private plate the less numbers or letters increase its value the combinations of the numbers and letters can make some worth more than others in theory you could get the number plate UK 8055Y this can be read as UK BOSSY and so has more value what cant be done is to buy what you specifically want on your number plate you can only ask what they have or the nearest match they will not issue a plate because its what you want they are the equivalent to your vanity plates the difference is your are state plates and you can get what ever you want on them this is not the case here so they can go for a few hundred dollars into the thousands owners of the number plate can resell them but the car it was on has to be re registered often with its original plate
My Aunt bought the personalise number plate 'SAS H2O' for £500 pounds. The first 3 letters were the initials of her name and the H2O bit just appealed to her. She didn't buy the physical number plate. She bought the legal right to use that sequence of letters and numbers.
Yes, these ARE the plates. The white background ones go on the front of the car, the yellow background ones on the back of the car. These "cherished" plates start around £250 but the sky is the limit when it comes to the more special ones, for example "X 1" or any two - character plate. There is a big market for these here in the UK.
As someone who had a private plate bought for me for a birthday. I’m glad to say that the lowest prices start at around £157. Then once you get a letter/ certificate of authorisation to use from the DVLA, then you can register your car against the plate. If you change your car, you have to go back on line and de-register the car and pay £80 to transfer it to your new car. You give the certificate then to the garage who makes up the plate. Or sometimes you can take the plate off, but the old car will then be registered with a different number plate, dependant on its age and year. Our current plates use a suffix (based on the county) and a number. Our plates change twice a year (March & Sept). So March would be 24 and in Sept would be 74. So we know which 6 month period the car was registered. Next year it’ll be 25 and 75. We started the new numbering system back in 2001. Which actually started in Sept and was 51. Etc.
When you remove your personalised plate from your car to put onto another car the car that originally had the personalised plate is returned to its original number plate. I have done this and never had to pay the £80 transfer fee. Just went onto dvla website and did it all online and changed the plates the same day.
@@WoNkY_DoG yeah you do if you are putting the plate on another car. It’s the “DVLA registration fee”. I’ve done it so many times now, I’m used to it.
@@ianroper2812 I changed mine last year and never paid a fee. So maybe i was lucky or it was a glitch on dvla website?
The reason people buy these plates is vanity.
Yup, I'd have to agree with you there. It seems (to me) that many of the sequences of numbers/letters are so obscure, they can't mean anything to the casual observer, and only have any really special meaning to the owner. So why put it on public display for all to see, unless it's just a projection of the owner's ego?
No not vanity, more like insanity
Store of wealth or investment
Every single one of my bosses has a flashy sports car with a personalised number plate. Twats.
@@jameswiglesworth5004 Insanity? A plate like the 5I NGH one is a very safe investment. There are shrewd entrepreneurs who play the plate market like art collectors, with a keen eye on resale value in the future, never intending to re-register their own cars.
Pretty simple process in the UK. Cars are issued with plates so you don’t buy them (unless you want a personalised one). You don’t need to go to a physical place for any car stuff. Insurance is done on phone or online, car tax is paid online and getting/renewing licenses is via a paper (posted to DVLA) or online form. All that queuing I see online at your DMV is a foreign concept here. If you buy or sell a car, again it’s just paperwork you send off from home and you just organise insurance online for the new car to start the day you buy it.
Wish I still had the registration that was on a 1961 Mini I owned in 69, 5 UPD, not the first time that Surrey C C had issued it. Back then they couldn't be sold, they either went back to the issuing authority when the vehicle scrapped or one could transfer it to another vehicle registered to one, that vehicles' registration going back to the issuing authority. When DVLC now DVLA was set up and took over from County Councils was the first that registration numbers could be sold, they later cashed in by auctioning off suitable ones.
I've been out of UK for 22 years, but when my Dad bought a Ford Prefect and then an Anglia in about 1950+, the number plates would consist of 3 letters and 3 numbers. x'PO' and x'PX' referred to West Sussex, if memory serves. Then later came a final letter, referring to the car's first registration year. The suffix 'A' told you that a car was newer than a car with 'F' for example. Ah, the days of a cranking handle in January, ( choke out) ,....and flip out indicators!
I still remember the registration plate of my dad's car. As a young child I was told to memorise it in case I lost track of my parents at an event for example. It was XXM 122 a two tone blue Austin Cambridge. Also my first car was MLL 916D a red Austin Mini.
They both had black plates with white letters and numbers.
In the UK a plate is issued to your car when it is new. It stays on the car for life. Unless you purchase a private plate. These are from older cars which have been scrapped. Also you can buy an old car with title and good plate and transfer it to your car.
I have had my personal plate for 20 odd years, it has been on around 10 different cars, yes it is vanity or just a bit of fun. When i first got it it went on my MG, my initials are WKC so i have M6 WKC at the time it cost £175.
Mercedes benz world is near me in Weybridge surrey near the famous Brooklands race track (no longer fully operational) and the Brooklands aviation museum.
'A 1' is the classic example of what is probably the best number plate you can buy, and it would also be the most expensive number plate you can buy, being worth in excess of 10 million pounds if it were up to sale.
Few bits of info for you.
Our plates are plastic not metal. (Although they used to be metal up to the 80s, and some old cars still have metal, but since then they’re plastic).
We have a front and a rear plate on our cars. Front must be white, rear must be yellow.
All cars have a random registration number assigned from new by DVLA (our version of DMV), but you can buy a different registration as in this video. Cheapest ones go for around £100 plus £90 admin fee. When you buy a registration you only buy the right to use that on your car, DVLA still own it and can retract it at any point.
Registration investment is big business. There are lots of companies just trading in personalised plates.
My mum bought me a personalised plate for my 18th birthday. (Back in 1990). She paid £120 for it. I still use it today and I’ve had offers for over £35k for it from registration number trading companies. I’ll never sell it until I stop driving as my mum isn’t with us anymore and every time I get in my car I think of her.
That's pretty cool! Priceless gift, for sure.
An interesting note Steve. Cities in the UK issue registration plates when you first register your car from new, and they have some letters from the city and a series of numbers. For instance, Kingston upon Hull. Or Hull City have AT, KH and RH are allocated to Hull City. So the Royal Household cars bear HRH with numbers 1 to 6 or may even be more. In general three letters and 2-3 numbers with a year letter used to be normal. Then they from bean an "A" Reg. Would tell you the age of the car and where it was originally registered. The Later Registration plates have two Numbers as the registration year. My car is Registered in 2011 and it has 60 in the middle which means it was a 2010-2011 Reg. Plate.
The royal plates would be worth millions and are from my home town.
In the village where I live a few years ago there were the following 3 personalised plates
1) H1 SPY
2) H1 MUM &
3) H1 DOC
I often wondered who owned them
None of these are still around so they were either sold or the owners moved
In the uk we have to have reg plates on the front and back of the car. White is for front, yellow is for the rear of the car. Our registration numbers are in effect unique identifiers using a pre-determined format. It's not the plastic thats expensive, its the arrangement of the letters and numbers which by coincidence create a word or some meaning which would have a special meaning to the person wanting to put it on there car, I.E Name, or reference to a type or car etc
Uk plates are reflective plastic, you have to have a white plate on the front and a yellow one at the rear, motorcycles only require a plate at the rear
Motorcycles used to have a number plate that followed the contour of the front mudguard, with the registration on the right and left side. Unfortunately due to the plate being metal some fatal and terrible accidents happened due to the slicing action of the plate. So only rear number plates now.
Depends on whether you're quicker than the market, when I first became a Radio Amateur the authorities introduced the ability to request a three letter group within the callsign, so as my initials are WJF I applied for M5WJF, this was a relatively new callsign class, so when I won some money on the lottery with a £1 stake, I applied to the DVLA for a registration plate M5 WJF, because DVLA were behind the curve, they were only charging the minimum of £250, when at the time vanity number plates were going for thousands.
So, free vanity Radio Callsign + cheap vanity Car Registration Number that can be transferred to any vehicle I own.
In addition to the other comments. The UK has a fixed format for plates. They have a maximum of seven characters.
Before 2001, the format was LLLNNNL or LNNNLLL eg ABC123D, or D345EFG but did not have to contain all 7. So A1 or B3CDE would be legally available.
The intitial or final SINGLE letter dictated the year of first registration. Commonly, two of the letters would indicate where the car was made.. eg LO for London, BR for Bristol etc.
After March 2001, the format changed to LLNNLLL eg AB01CDE, where the numbers indicate the year.
The UK also has March and September registration points, so, for example, in 2001 the numbers changed to 51 to indicate the car was registered after September.
Basically, if you look at a standard UK plate, you immediately know when and where that car was first made/registered.
Personal plates cannot make a car appear newer. So you can't put a LL01LLL plate or later on a pre-2001 car for example. Even if it's "personalised" eg AB01DAN on a 2000 model car.
Certain other plates are actually de-facto banned, as the DVLA will not allow certain ones to be sold if they spell, or approximate certain words. Eg NAZ1 HIT13R or RAP15T.
That said, PEN15, PEN1S and similar iterations did get through (the former used to "live" in North London and I'd see it quite often).
The Chinese market has made any plates with H or 8 in it quite expensive, as 8 is considered very lucky.
The running joke was that rather than personalise your plate, just legally change your name... That only costs £49.32.
Of course, being "Mr John LD51GXF" might come with its own issues!
😂
The company I used to work for owned the number A1. Originally on a gaffer`s car it it was shunted around various test fleet cars and was on a couple of Rover V8s. Last I remember of it was on a Wolseley 2200, probably worth many multiples of the value of the car.
A friend's brother who has the initials AO bought the numberplate H11MAO. There was nothing particularly special about that number plate, and it followed the standard format of the time. But with careful positioning of spaces, and also of a black screw cover over one of the fixing screws, he got it to read "HI I'M AO"!
My friend bought his wife a second hand car cos it had mag on it her name being Maggie lol
it's illegal to change the spacing from H11 MAO.
@@RWL2012 It's also illegal to use screws to alter the appearance, such as putting one between 11 to make it look like H is a massive no no
@@crobulous9581The screw was already between the 1 and the M (not between the two 1s), he just had a black cap added to it to make it look like an apostrophe. That said, I'm not about to jump into my time machine and go back 34 years to tell him what he did was illegal! 😊
Plates are made from Perspex. white on the front and yellow on the back. Cars over 40 years old [historic vehicles] can have black plates with white letters.
6:00 why do people do it? Why do people pay for designer clothes when any old shirt or pair of jeans will do? It's because it has a label to show wealth I guess. And the same with 'private plates' in the UK. It's visible wealth I guess.
Unlike the US, where two different states can have the same numberplate, every plate un the UK is unique. Personal plates are considered status symbols here. Getting one with your name or initials can be very expensive, even if it is just an ego massager.
Plates here are generally plastic. Also, white plates are for the front of a vehicle, and yellow is for the rear.
Why do people spend that much on a number plate? Because they can!
For just the same reason that people buy obscenely expensive art or wines or anything else - there's an element of investment, and an element of showing off about the fact that you can afford to pay £300k for something that most people just go for the free one.
Standard number plates since 1963 have had an identifier for when the car was made and where it was first registered encoded in it, and every car is issued with one when the first owner buys it. (You may get a choice of a few, the dealership will buy a stack but may not assign them to individual cars until the sale goes through, but you don't get to make it up yourself).
Personalised plates can then be registered as an alias, to be used in place of the standard plate issued. A personalised plate must conform to certain rules: it can't pretend to be a registration year that is newer than the car itself (eg if your car was built in 2021, you couldn't put a plate on it that implies it was built in 2024), it can't include words deemed offensive by the licensing authority (including when numbers _look like_ letters, so you couldn't have C-zero-CK, for example), and the letters and numbers have to fit certain patterns (eg you could have AAA111 but not A1A1A1). If you buy a personalised plate, you can then keep the plate when you change your car and attach it to your new car, whereas normal people have to memorise a new plate when they get a new car!
In the UK your car comes with a number plate, which remains on the car for its lifetime. You can buy personalised plates eg: your initials and a number. Number plates in the UK have to be made of polycarbon or plastic. Metal plates are illegal.
Cars come with the right to use a number plate, but you have to buy the physical plates, its added to your purchase price for new car, along with road tax, and delivery charge.
Note Metal plates may have be fitted originally and would remain legal, not sure when they stopped making them.
The video title is a bit misleading. The plate is not the expensive part it is the actual numbers and letters (the registration).
When a car is first registered, it is allocated a registration number. That normally stays with the car for life. Incidentally, the registration number not only helps to identify the car, it also shows the age of the car, to within a 6 month period.
The different colours denote whether the plate is displayed on the front or rear of the car.
With white for the front and yellow for the rear.
You can, however, change your cars registration number, but you can't put a registration that says the car is new on an old car. You can, however, put an old registration on a newer car.
Incidentally, the government owns the registration. All you are doing is purchasing the right to use that registration number.
As previous comments say it isn’t the piece of plastic you buy, it’s the exclusive use of that combination of characters. It could be a reference to the car itself, or a famous example of the car you have, either in real life or a film (like putting a number plate that says B0ND 1 on an Aston Martin), or a reference to a name, a celebrity, a place, a country, or a cool catch phrase or something. A relative of mine has a personalised plate has the name of a Scottish Glen in it , Glen Esk. The plate is G1 ESK.
to help dispel some of your confusion, Steve, each car in the UK must display the licence number both on the front and the back of the car. The front number plate is black letters and numbers on a white background, the rear number plate is the same black letters and numbers on a yellow background
1. Our number plates arent differentiated by city/state etc... a UK plate is a UK plate and that plate is registered to the car. The owner of said registration plate is liable for any parking fines, speeding etc.
2. Because our plates arent different for each city/district... having a personalised one is harder to do and can be more expensive.
3. Ours are plastic, not metal. But the ones on the vid were replicas 😊
From our DVLA a standard personal number plate cost from £80 to £250 depending on what you want of course that is. The world's most expensive number plate was sold for £7.5 million in 2021. White number plate goes on the front of the car and yellow on the back and all made from plastic.
The world's most expensive number plate is *F1,* and is located in my city *Bradford.*
It's owned by *Afzal Kahn* who I've seen drive his rare cars past my house a few times in recent years, although I haven't noticed him for a while.
*Afzal Kahn* and *Naveed "Barugzai" Khan* (no relation as shown by the different spellings) are both multi millionaires car dealers and car modifiers who have celebrity customers, and have both had TV series.
A lot of people have private plates to hide the age of their cars, standard plates show the year of registration. We can buy cheap private plates starting at a few hundred pounds.
Personalised plates are very common in the UK especially in more affluent areas, there are plate spotters who go around looking at peoples number plates and post adverts on car windscreens looking to purchase you`re plate if you`ve got an interesting one, there are also various on-line and magazine columns where you can view registrations for sale....Personal plates or cherished plates as they are sometime known are big business and you can buy one fairly cheap too, theres a bit of luck involved getting the numbers on a plate to match in with you`re initials or surname. ...There is two plates on every car by law, the white plate goes on the front and the yellow goes on the back, the plate has to be a specified size and the numbers/letters have to be a certain height and spacing with no other advertising etc on the plate like what you would see in the usa, also the both plates have to be lit up after dark using the cars lighting system.
You get get a personalised plate for as little as £250 but they're often not that personalised and are in a standard format e.g AB12 ABC or S123 MEL or TNW 603M or something similar, you certainly pay more for something like DEN 22 or GAW 123
I have a "personal" plate on my car in the UK, never had one before. As others have explained it is not the physical plate that costs the money, it is the entitlement to use it. Mine was an inexpensive plate, and bought directly from the DVLA. All I got for the money was a certificate. A pair of plates (yellow for the rear and white for the front) costs a minimal amount to have made up. In principle I can keep transferring my plate from car to car forever or sell it on. (admin charges may apply). A friend has a plate that has one number and two letters, he bought it a long time ago, it is now widely thought to be "worth" over £100,000. There are times when I wish my car was less noticeable, but only when I have done a bad lane change or similar. (not often).
A lot of plates only mean something to the owner, but once in a while I do see a plate that actually looks cool.
Hi Steve and Lyndsey.
These auctions are organised by or for the DVLA.
All vehicles in the UK have to be registered on 1st purchase and that registration stays with the vehicle. You can pay to change the registration but it has to fit specific requirements.
Certain plates contain a sequence of letters and numbers which might look like a name, initials or other sequence and pretentious individuals will pay sometimes silly amounts to own that number on their vehicle. The more unique the registration the more the cost. It’s the ownership of the registration not the piece of plastic (white on front yellow on rear of vehicle).
If you change the vehicle you can transfer the registration to your new one for a fee I believe.
Hey Steve and Lindsey. If you buy a used car in the UK the number plate that's on it stays on it. They don't change unless you want to personalize it. Plus you get 2 a yellow on the back and white on the front.
Vehicles here have white plates on the front and yellow at the rear - normally made of plastic. The format has changed several times as more vehicles are registered and with the more recent combinations of 6 or 7 letters and numbers, you can use the letters to spell a name or some other word or meaningful sequence of numbers and letters. You buy the right to register that plate on your vehicle, not the physical plate. It's big business, but certain sequences won't be released for sale if they are potentially offensive. It's not legal to change the number fonts or spacing of the letters and numbers or to insert screw caps in certain places to change a character (for example put a screw cap between 1 and 1 to make an 'H' but a lot of people do!
the cost to get a personalised number plate in UK starts at £154 you can only have it if it is unique within the rules of what letters numbers are allowed eg cant have letters I, O or Q because they can be easily confused with number 1 and 0
then the cost goes up for special ones that have more meaning. once you buy the number it is yours for life and you and move it from car to car when you replace the car if you want. At a cost to reregister the new car but you dont need to buy the number again.
Mercedes Benz world is great fun, there is lots to see and do there. British cars have 2 number plates a white on the front and a yellow one on the back, and they are plastic.
In the late 1990’s in Belfast I saw a car several times with the number plate TR1 MBL3, so the owner must either have been called Trimble, or he was a supporter of the then Ulster Unionist’s leader, David Trimble.
It's a vanity thing and the people that buy these won't worry about the cost 🤣
These are also good for hiding the age of your car because uk standard license plates all have the year of manufacture on like EG21 XMN means it is a 2021 car, so if someone has an older car and picks up a personalised plate for £500 without a date on it you can hide your car age
A difference between the USA and the UK is that generally a number plate is registered to a car. You buy a car and it comes with that number plate. If you own a private plate when you buy or sell the car you have to do the paperwork to change the plates over.
One of the best personalized plates I ever saw was on a Jaguar, just off the Kings Road in London: OPE6 01L (OPEC Oil). I guess the owner was a big-wig in the business.
You’re paying more for the plate than most of the cars themselves 😂
You have to change the number plates through the DVLA
And don’t you have to pay every time you change cars?
In the uk we have to pay road tax and insurance every year & a MOT test every year before you can re tax & insurance policy
They don't have mot over there. Many cars are falling to bits 😂
The actual plastic bit you hold is only worth about £15 amd can be made in almost any motor shop. The value is in being able to use the plate legally.
The current layout of AB12 CDE was introduced in 2001. From 1983 until then the plate format was A 123 BCD with the first Letter denoting the year the vehicle was first registered, and before then it was ABC 123 D with the last number being the registration year. The really prized plates are those from before then, when the plates were either 1-3 letter followed by 1-4 numbers, or vice versa with nothing denoting the date. As all plates have to have been originally issued by the DVLA (our DMV) to get a plate like 1 D, VIP 1, ABC 123, or JB 007, not only must the plate have been in continuous use, but someone has to be willing to sell it. Numbers are deleted if the car is scrapped and the letters are random increasing the rarity of significant combinations, so much like anything else that's rare or antiquated people covet them and they soon surge to ridiculous levels. Simon Cowell has an Aston Martin with the plate MI AML (My Aston Martin Lagonda) and I'm sure it wasn't cheap.
The 25 0 plate has a current asking p[rice of £750,000. Both X1 and G1 number plates have an asking price of £1 million each. The number plate F1 has an asking price of £10 million.
Steve, you can get a personal plate from about £75, but then you have to pay The DVLA (our version of your DMV) a £80 registration fee and then pay again to get the plates made - one white for the front, one yellow for the back (but with black characters)…
Normal car registration fee in UK is £55. This gets you the registration number you then pay the car dealer to produce the physical plates which are about £10 -20
I D ended up on a bently bentayga ,I have a personalised plate I think it cost £85 it was a present.the difference in colour is because the front plate has to have a white background and yellow on the rear
The craziest thing about all this is the fact that people will spend all this money for something that they technically won't own. You are buying the right to use the registration but that right can be stripped by the DVLA if you are caught misusing it, by rearranging the characters or spacing for example.