TESLA Number Plates To Be Sold

en years ago Alex Ortega saw a story about Elon Musk. Elon had sold out of Paypal and was investing in a new business called Tesla. They were a year away from launching their first car – the Roadster. Alex knew Elon was onto something.

He couldn’t buy shares – a shame, he’d be a wealthy man right now – instead, he registered the Number Plate “TESLA” in New South Wales.

Kept in storage all these years, it’s cost Alex a lot of money every year – over $500 – to keep them, and now it’s time to move on and see if he can get a return from the investment.

Next month, on November 1 he will list the number plates on eBay starting at $1 with a reserve. When we spoke to Alex he wouldn’t reveal his reserve, only to say “over the years I’ve been offered a lot of money for them”.

When I suggested the market value of a name plate like that would be around $5,000 Alex was quick to reply “These are worth much more than that”. So you can expect a high reserve.

For any normal plate that’s a word you might fetch 5, possibly $10,000 – but Alex has something important on his side: Wealthy Tesla car owners.

A Tesla owner has forked out well over $200,000 for their car. Many already have vanity plates, relating to the environment or even TE5LA – but this is pretty special.

If wealthy Tesla owner Simon Hackett lived in NSW he’d be the perfect buyer (he lives in South Australia), but that won’t stop many looking closely at the Auction.

Kicking off on November 1, it will last 10 days.

Given the audience here, it’s possible, if not likely the plate will fetch over $20,000. We shall wait and see.

The actual plates are in storage at a Sydney Motor Registry to confirm the validity of Mr Ortega’s ownership.

So what are the top selling number plates in the UK? The DVLA has been selling private plates to UK motorists since 1989. During this time, there have been a number of records set, but most of the top 10 have been bought in the past 15 years. Here’s what currently makes the list:

25 0 – A Ferrari dealer bought this for £518k in 2014. It is now on a £10 million Ferrari 250 SWB.
F 1 – A businessman, Afzal Khan, bought this for £440k in 2008 and put it on his McLaren-Mercedes SLR.
S 1 – This was bought in 2008 for £404k by an anonymous buyer.
1 D – Businessman Nabil Bishara bought this plate in 2009 (before One Direction was formed, so it is not a reference to the band) for £352k.
M 1 – Businessman Mike McCoomb bought this number plate in 2006 for £331k, apparently for his son, who was 10 at the time.
VIP 1 – Chelsea owner and businessman Roman Abramovich bought this plate for £285k in 2006.
51 NGH – This number plate, which looks like the surname Singh, was sold in 2006 for £254k.
1 RH – Businessman Robert Haverson bought this in 2006 for £247k.
K1 NGS – This reg plate, which looks like the word “kings”, was bought anonymously in 1993 for £231k.
1 0 – This very simple but striking number plate was bought anonymously in 2009 for £170k.

These are large amounts of money, but they are all small compared to the top-selling number plates found in other parts of the world. Abu Dhabi, in the UAE, has the record for the most expensive number plate ever sold. That number plate was a simple “1”. It was bought in 2008 by businessman Saeed Abdul Ghaffar Khouri for £7.25 million.

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