Vinnie Loves His Number Plates!

Vinnie Jones may have moved to Hollywood but recent pictures show that his love of number plates are still with him. Vinnie, footballer turned actor was pictured in Hollywood, driving his Range Rover with the number plate 'UK VIN'. And driving behind him in a Jaguar was his wife, Tanya. Her car had the registration 'UK TANYA'. It's not known why they were driving separate cars - maybe they wanted to show off their car registration?

Plate Confusion

In the UK number plates are unique. Of course you will get similar variations but you can be sure they are definitely all different. The only time you will see two identical registrations is when one has been cloned. When this happens, it can be quite a nightmare. Spare a thought then for the people in America, where even if you have a registration, there could be 68 others just like it. That's right - it is possible for one registration to be shared by 69 plates.

Marie Lai, a resident of Lisle, Illinois received traffic fines from New York even though her car was parked in her garage, 500 miles away. That's a nine hour drive! After a lot of investigating and with help from a newspaper's “Problem Solver” column, Lai found out that the offences were caused by another vehicle with the same registration.

Ernie Dannenberger, director of the vehicle services department in the Illinois secretary of state's office, said that there should not really have been any confusion. Although it is possible for commercial vehicles and domestic passenger vehicles to have same license plate numbers, commercial vehicles have a slightly smaller letter at the end of the plate character string.

So how is it possible that one registration can be on 69 vehicles? Well, these variations are possible because the state allows various custom or “specialty” plates to be issued. These variations include 18 college plates, 18 military plates and 33 other private plate versions promoting various groups and causes. The number plates are apparently distinguished from one another by a two-letter code, smaller than the main characters, which is stacked to the right of the main registration ID number.

Doesn't seem very distinguishable to me!

Insanity Plates!

It's not just the UK that love number plates. In America, personal registrations or vanity plates as they are known over there, are just as popular. The system in the US differs from that over here. They are a lot more flexible with the format of their registrations and almost anything (as long as it gets past the issuing authorities) goes. This though can make filtering what are seen as offensive or inappropriate plates much more difficult.

Recently, I came into contact with Jason who recently got into plate spotting in the US.

He sent us this picture of a car spotted in Washington.



And just to show you can have anything here's a car with just 'U' on. Who could the U be?




And for someone who wanted a vanity plate but couldn't decide what to have:



Check out the other photos on Jason's site at Insanity Plates.

Flags Finally Allowed on UK Number Plates

It's taken eight years but at last it is legal for drivers to have flags on their number plates. In 2001, it was only the Euro flag that you could legally display however drivers were also told that the national flags would be legal and the legislation would be altered within a month. For some reason, it wasn't. So for the last eight years, anyone with a national flag had illegal plates. Although authorities had been asked to take a 'relaxed attitude' to these, it didn't stop the police stopping and fining drivers.

Now finally, we are officially allowed to display the Cross of St George, the Scottish Saltire, the Welsh Dragon and the British Union Flag on our number plates. However, anyone who has a national flag on their plates will find that they are still required to display a “GB” sticker when heading to Europe.

Another

We know that the DVLA have previously blocked some combinations of letters from being issued but in the America they have to look at cases on an individual basis. This is because the USA have a flexible registrations system where individuals can choose almost any combination of numbers and letters with a rigid format system. Imagine Kelly Coffman-Lee’s surprise when she was told her registration was x-rated. State officials in Colorado decided that 38 year old Coffman Lee’s suggestion, ‘ILVTOFU’ could be interpreted as an profanity. However, she insists that the plate represents her and her family’s love of tofu, a staple of the family as they are vegan.

Mark Couch, a spokesman for the Department of Revenue says, "We don't allow 'FU' because some people could read that as street language for sex."

This has caused such a stir that the story has even been reported on the famous liberal news and comment website The Huffington Post.

Number Plate Auction Round-Up

Hey everyone, sorry it's a little late but here's a roundup of the DVLA number plates auction that was held over three days from Wed 25th Mar - Fri 27th Mar 2009. The auction was held at Ardencote Manor Hotel, Country Club & Spa in Warwick.

The two main attractions were '1 D' on the first day and the second of the 'O' series on day three. And they didn't disappoint.

The registration '1 O' was sold in January 2009 for an impressive £210,242 and there was speculation that the buyer may return and try for '2 O'. The eventual winning bid of £115,000 came by phone so at the moment we don't know if it was the same person or not. The total amount paid for it was £142,249.

The big one - '1 D' - went on day one for a whopping £352,441 (including fees and taxes). This was bought by Lebanese property developer Nabil Bishara as a present for his wife. Now that's not a bad birthday gift!

Here are some of the other best sellers (prices include fees and taxes):

HU57 LER- £37,168
11 MRN - £25,300
G80 RGE - £16,275
90 A - £15,533
PHF 1 - £15,162
82 S - £14,915
151 S - £14,915
LUC 1Y - £14,297
B4 LLS - £13,308
TOO 81G - £12,690
RUG 13Y - £12,443
3 PEP - £11,701
86 J - £11,454
71 W - £11,454
2 KAH - £11,206
90 MR - £10,712
78 H - £10,217
86 JM - £10,094

Number plate 1 D sells for £352,411

Today is the last day of the DVLA auction at Ardencote Manor Hotel and Country Club, Warwick. Once again there have been some great sales, showing the resilience of number plates.

As expected, the registration '1 D' was the star of the show when it sold on Wednesday 25th March. A record breaker even before the auction had started by commanding the highest ever reserve set for an auction of this type. It didn't take long for the bidding to reach £100,000 and the plate eventually sold for a hammer price of £285,000. The total price paid including fees and taxes was a staggering £352,411. This sets the record for the highest price at a DVLA registrations auction.

The number plate was bought by Lebanese property developer Nabil Bishara who bought it as a birthday present for his wife. '1 D' is expected to go on her Bentley.