Millions Of Pounds Spent On Personalised Reg Plates

Business partners Adel Abdul Aziz Al Matrooshi and Khalid Salmeen spent around Dh4.5m to buy several fancy plates during the 95th Open Auction of the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) at Grand Hyatt Hotel on Saturday. They were also happy to take home the second most expensive plate 'H33' which they bought for Dh2.82m.

Aside from the 'H33', the duo also won the bidding war to grab K8888 (bought for Dh670,000); O120 (Dh350,0000); R3030 (Dh130,000); P7700 (Dh116,000); K8800 (Dh84,000) and a few more special plates. As we go to press, the auction is still going on and the two are aiming to buy more plates with triple, quadruple and quintet numbers.

"We are going to sell these special plates, We have been trading fancy plates for 14 years and it's a good business," he added.

It was, however, "family legacy and heirloom" value that moved Emirati Rashid Ahmad to buy a special plate for Dh290,000.

He said he spent around Dh800,000 in the previous auction and although it was very tempting to re-sell a special plate he bought last year, he opted to keep it as a "family legacy."

"Special plates are not just fashionable, it's an investment like gold which will fetch you really good money," Ahmad explained.

"At the last auction, I bought a three-digit code for Dh325,000 and after a few months, someone offered me to buy it for Dh370,000 but I did not sell it. The money I spent is for charity and the special plate is a good bragging right," Ahmad underlined.

Meanwhile, the winner of the most expensive R13 which fetched a price of Dh2.92m declined to be interviewed. He carried the auction ID number 410.

Sultan Al-Marzooki, director of Vehicles Licensing at RTA's Licensing Agency, said, "The RTA's auction has witnessed a huge footfall from various community segments as they contribute immensely to realising our strategic goal of bringing happiness to people. The auction is part of RTA's third strategic goal which is "people happiness."

How close a series of letters or numbers are to a real name of word: if the match quality is high (and the numbers and letters are very convincing in making a popular word), the value of the registration plate will be higher. This means that a match like 5IMON, for the name Simon, will be worth a lot more than a more obscure set of letters and numbers that are not as convincing a match, such as S17 MMM for the name Sam.

The style of the plate: this means establishing if it is a new-style plate, an older-style format or if it is dateless or Irish, for instance. Other options are that it is a prefix-style plate or a suffix-style plate. New-style number plates, which have been produced since 2001, tend to be the least valuable because they are a bit less appealing to some collectors, plus the rule about not having plates that are newer than your car can also come into play, putting people off from buying a newer-style plate for their older car. Prefix-style number plates, which were in production between 1983 and 2001 can be more popular as more vehicles are entitled to have those licence numbers, and they may have fewer characters in total. Suffix-style plates, issued from 1963 to 1983 are relatively rare, which means they can attract higher prices than prefix-style plates and newer designs. Dateless number plates, also known as cherished number plates, were produced between 1903 and 1963 and are nearly always the most valuable number plate configurations; they have fewer digits and their dateless nature means that people can hide the age of their car. Irish number plates are similar to dateless number plates, especially because they don’t have a year identifier. They also tend to be cheaper than other types of vehicle registration plates.

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