VIP Number Plates Raise Money
The VIP number plate series to commemorate Visit Pahang Year 2017 has earned the state’s tourism board RM10.3 million. The total sum is from 1,903 numbers sold in a year, according to Bernama.
The state’s tourism and culture board chairman Datuk Seri Mohd Sharkar Shamsudin said that RM10.3 million is a rough figure before factoring in administration costs and GST.
“The project is a joint initiative with the private sector (Digital Tourism Sdn Bhd) to help the state government roll out Visit Pahang Year 2017. A big part of the overseas promotions and publicity programmes was funded by this project,” he said during the winding-up session of the state assembly in Kuantan yesterday.
Mohd Sharkar said that organising a Visit Pahang Year normally costs the state government RM20 million to RM40 million, but with smart partnerships, the tourism board managed to obtain sponsorships and donations totalling RM31.2 million. The state government views Visit Pahang Year 2017 as a success and plans to extend the campaign to 2018, with a launch scheduled for the end of the year.
There have been no shortage of fancy number plates for tender lately. We’ve seen the Y series, G series, ‘T1M‘, ‘A1M‘, ‘U’, ‘US’, ‘SMS‘, ‘RIMAU‘, ‘PERFECT’, ‘NAAM’, ‘VIP’, ‘GT’ and ‘PATRIOT’, on top of unique regular series plates such as ‘AKU‘ and ‘RR‘ and ‘DDD‘, among others.
Some will say that a private number plate is only for those of us who don’t really know what to do with a pile of money. And, to some extent, they may be true. After all, aren’t these plates the epitome of smugness rich brats?
However, according to the numbers released to the public, the Treasury earned £102 million from private number plates only in 2015. This means that over 335,000 people chose to embellish their cars with a meaningful plate and were happy to pay more for this.
So, does this mean that more and more people in the UK have more money than they can spend? Not really; it just means that people no longer see the idea of a personalised plate as something that shows vanity and snobbery. But why do people actually do it?
Top five reasons why people like private plates
We’ve analysed a few great stories from people with cool cars and even cooler number plates and these are the main reasons that stood out:
While you won’t be seen as a snob, many people still do it to show off. Whether you got a great car and you want to make sure people know it’s yours, or you just want to flaunt your success in front of everyone, vanity remains the number one reason. Still, this doesn’t make you a bad person, just one with things to show to the world.
We develop affection for the weirdest of things and we use even weirder ways to keep a reminder of the things of which we are emotional. Thus, a private number can remind you of your beloved or your first gig, or anything that is important to you.
In some families, having a personalised number plate is tradition and everyone gets one with their first car. This is usually the name of the owner or a combination that gets as close as possible. This is why many dealers offer the possibility to get the number as a gift for someone.
A cool car with a great plate can be quite the centre of attention so why not take advantage of the situation and promote your business or personal brand? Just imagine how cool it would be if you are a company that rents limos for events and you’d have personalised number plates that fit most popular events such as marriage, prom, or bachelor parties?
This is somehow connected with the first reason as people like to make their cars their own. The personalised number plate is a form of automotive jewellery and shows how cool of a person you actually are. You didn’t have to buy this cool plate, but you did because you like unique things that speak about your personality.
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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