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Your license plate can say a lot about you.
It might say that you have bad culinary preferences; it might say that you’re fake Canadian;
or, if you have the right one, it might say that you’re the type of person who would
enjoy flushing money down the toilet just for the fleeting moment of amusement stemmed
from emulating the analogous metaphor.
Let me explain slowly and circuitously.
License plates have been around for over a century, starting in 1901, when New York first
required that all car owners write their own initials on the back of their cars “in a
conspicuous place, the letters forming such initials to be at least three inches in height.”
Back then, in addition to the three-inch initials, owners were allowed to choose an identifying
number to put on the back, and they could write their initials and that number however
they wanted—in wood, in metal, or even in the tears of the horse-and-buggy riders they
could now zoom past in their magical metal chariots.
But pretty soon there started to be a problem—too many car owners had the same initials.
You would think this would be a pretty predictable problem in a country where they had already
had presidents James Madison and James Monroe, John Adams and John Adams, and Andrew Jackson
and Andrew Johnson—this must be the diversity problem they’re talking about with US presidents.
To fix this initial issue, in 1903, New York changed things up and decided that the government
would start assigning people unique license plates numbers—no more writing your initials
on the back of the car which was great news for then-governor of New York, Benjamin Odell,
who was presumably tired of driving around in a car that said B.O.
Nowadays, the system is about the same—most governments assign people their license plate
numbers completely randomly.
If you want a specific number or set of letters—a vanity plate, as they’re called—you’ll
have to get the government to give it to you, or, if somebody already owns the license plate
you want, you’ll have to get that person to sell it to you and that’s where the market
for special license plates comes in.
Normally a license plate costs somewhere between nothing and $20.
In the US, depending on the state, a vanity license plate might cost between $5 and $100
if you buy it from the government.
But on the private license plate selling market, the prices for certain plates can be a lot
higher.
Of course, when I say a lot higher, I mean a lot higher.
For example, since I like saying things that have never been said, let’s talk about Delaware.
In Delaware, there’s no limit on how low someone’s license plate number can be.
Therefore, one can just be the number 1, and someone’s is—by law, it’s the governor’s.
The lieutenant governor then gets 2, and the Delaware secretary of State gets three, but
everything else is available to the public.
Your license plate might be 4, or 5, or 6, or 7, or 8, or 9, or 10, or 11, or 12, or
13, or 14 or…you know what, you probably get it.
It can really be any number… like 15, or 16, or 17, or 18, or 19, or 20, or 21, or
22.
Those are all numbers.
Those low license plate numbers can lead to some very high bids when they go up for auction.
In 2018, the Delaware license plate “20” went for $410,000.
But the biggest sale of a Delaware license plate was in 2008, when someone paid $675,000
for the license plate “6.”
That’s right “6,” as in “the amount of money someone paid for this license plate
makes me six to my stomach.”
But it’s not just low numbers that can fetch high prices—if your license plates says
the right letters, it can spell a huge payday from the right buyer.
For example, take this Texas license plate: “12THMAN.”
The football team at Texas A&M University calls its fans their 12th man—as in, there
are 11 players on the field and the fans are their 12th player which is why this Texas
“12THMAN” plate was bought for $115,000, presumably by a very passionate Texas A&M
fan who now spends his days driving his car around football games instead of watching
them because he spent all his season ticket money on a license plate.
But if you’re wondering where the most expensive license plate in the world was sold, it’s
not Delaware, it’s not Texas, it’s not even the dystopian, human-free world of the
Pixar Cars films.
It’s rich people Disneyworld—the United Arab Emirates.
The UAE puts a ton of value on unique license plate numbers, and actually has both the world’s
first and the second most expensive license plates.
This guy, Balwinder Sahni, spent $9 million on the license plate “5,” which he put
onto his Rolls Royce.
Yes, 5, as in the number of $1.8 million dollar mansions he could have bought with that money
instead of buying a license plate.
But he is beaten out by this man, oil tycoon Saeed Abdul Ghafour Khouri, who in 2008 paid
about $14.3 million for a license plate that just said “1,” making it the most expensive
license plate in the world.
“1” as in, “I am the 1 person who was rich enough and crazy enough to spend $14.3
million on a license plate.”
Of course, if I believed in cars what I would put on my license plate would be CuriosityStream.com/HAI
because that’s the link at which you can watch unlimited documentaries from a library
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If you’re looking for something to start with, I’d recommend Vitamania—it’s a
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