Personalised Number Plate Information

NUMBER PLATES:

Sharjah: Fierce bidding at a Sharjah Police licence plate online auction raked in Dh3.4 million for a single plate numbered “15”, said Sharjah Police.

In total, Dh9.8 million was raised from the auction of 100 unique number plates.

Organised by Sharjah Police in collaboration with Emirates Auction from March 27 till April 1, the auction attracted the attention of bidders from across the UAE and beyond.

The online auction witnessed intense bidding on 100 unique number plates, including a pair of two-digit plates: 15 and 66, nine three-digit plates: 120, 121, 200, 202, 221, 313, 660, 801, 888, and 44 four-digit plates, featuring unique combinations such as: 2222 and 5000, in addition to 45 five-digit plates.
The highest bid on two-digit number went to plate number 15, which recorded Dh3,4 million, while plate number 66 recorded Dh1,2 million. The highest price for three-digit numbers went to plate number 888, which recorded Dh700,000.

The four-digit plate number 2222 was sold for Dh600,000 and the highest paid for a five-digit plate (66666) was Dh559,000.

Plate number 200 sold for Dh382,000, while the lowest bid went to plate number 89100 which sold for Dh6,000
The auction was viewed by 500,102 people via Emirate Auction’s mobile app and website.

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Record numbers of motorists are driving cars fitted with personalised numberplates amid a surge in “auto vanity”.

The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency sold a record 374,968 registrations last year, up 12 per cent in 12 months and almost five times the total in the mid-90s.

The trade in numberplates made more than £110 million for the Treasury in 2016-17 alone, a record annual total.

The rise coincides with an increase in the number of registrations made available by the DVLA, combined with a sharp rise in the value of rare plates over the past two decades.

In an era when we’re all supposed to be flaunting our individuality, the trend for personalised car number plates has apparently never been higher. The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA), which sells new and never-issued registrations, sold 374,968 last year, an increase of 12%.

Among private dealers, who sell pre-owned plates, business is just as good.

“For the past five years, [the market has] been steadily rising.” It is thought one reason is a personalised plate makes the age of the car less obvious. But he also says social media has played a huge part. “It’s, ‘Hey, everybody, look at me’,” he says.

People post pictures of their new cars on Instagram, and adding a private plate “seems to be something that people can use to boost their social media reach”.

At the entry-level end of the market, “registrations that start at £250, on average there are 800 of those sold every day.” He says one fairly common customer is the parent who buys a personalised plate for their child on passing their driving test, to go with a new car. “My typical client would be someone in their 40s or 50s, they’ve got a bit of money sitting about and always fancied a personalised number plate.”

At the extreme end, plates can fetch more than £500,000. In 2014, one classic-car dealer bought a “25 O” plate, reportedly for his Ferrari 250 GTO, for £400,000 (the final price, including fees, was £518,000) and a “250 L” for £130,000.

“The numbers that were selling for £1,000 in 1980 now sell for £150,000. What probably changed it was in the late 80s, when the government started to sell numberplates. We in the trade all thought it would devalue the numbers, but it didn’t, it just got more people interested.”

A personalised plate is “a prestigious thing. There’s a little bit of vanity about it,” says Saperia. As for those of us who believe it’s the mark of a bit of a berk, Saperia points out that the DVLA’s sale of personalised plates “bring more than £100m every year to the treasury”.

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The number plate 1D was bought for a record £352,000 at auction yesterday.

Tycoon Nabil Bishara won it in fierce bidding and plans to put it on his wife's Bentley.

His £352,411 offer beats the previous £254,000 best for a DVLA sale, set by 51NGH in 2006. The DVLA's Damian Lawson said after the auction in Claverdon, Warks: We're absolutely over the moon."

Britain's priciest car reg is F1, bought privately for £440,625 in 2008 by Afzal Kahn of Bradford, West Yorks."

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The RTA announced on Wednesday that customers can now check out both available and unavailable numbers as well as those that are likely to be available in the future.

Sultan Al Marzouqi, director of Vehicle Licensing at the RTA’s Licensing Agency, said: “This service does not only allow customers to enquire and buy the current codes, but also future codes (Up to Z). Customers can log onto RTA’s website (www.rta.ae) by clicking ‘Inquiring about Distinctive Number Plates’ to know about the available numbers and buy them online.”

He added that the system has been developed and programmed to provide information about available and unavailable numbers along with their prices.

The system also enables enquiring about numbers in four different ways: by code, by number of digits, by entering the numbers required, or by the price.

The RTA also offers distinguished number plates through online auction as well as through live auctions, drawing huge interests from enthusiasts with some plates going for millions of dirhams.

Last year, the single-digit plate D5 was auctioned for Dh33 million, the highest priced number in Dubai.

A TOTAL of 58 number plates are due to go under the hammer at Highlands College next week as part of an auction organised by the Infrastructure Department.

During the last two events, the auction raised more than £421,750 with the money going towards buying equipment for Driver and Vehicle Standards – the department’s authority which oversee the registration of the Island’s vehicles.

In 2013 one anonymous individual paid £71,000 for the plate JSY 1.

Infrastructure Minister Eddie Noel said that he was expecting one number plate to receive particular interest from bidders this year.

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The first series of number plates were issued in 1903 and ran until 1932, using the series A 1 to YY 9999. The letter or pair of letters indicated the local authority in whose area the vehicle was registered, for example A - London, B - Lancashire, C - West Riding of Yorkshire. In England and Wales the letter codes were initially allocated in order of population size (by the 1901 census) whilst Scotland and Ireland had their own sequences incorporating the letters S" and "I" respectively, which were allocated alphabetically: IA = Antrim, IB = Armagh, etc. When a licensing authority reached 9999, it was allocated another two letter mark, but there was no pattern to these subsequent allocations as they were allocated on a first come first served basis. There are three interesting anomalies where a zero has been issued - The Lord Provost of Edinburgh has S 0 and his Glasgow counterpart has G 0 while the official car of the Lord Provost of Aberdeen has RG 0. In addition the Lord Mayor

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