Number plates (Tags)
 

Been on hols in Florida last two weeks number plate (tag) spotting. I'm fascinated with the different coloured plates you have in America: The local Florida plates were mostly green letters/figures on on a white background, although there were a few other colours. there were a lot of out of state & Canadian plates of every colour of the rainbow & just about every letter/figure combination you could think of, my wife & I would be walking along & say "oh look, a Michigan/New York/Ontario/Georgia etc plate!" Think the locals thought we were mad, lol..

Here in England our plates are boring by comparison: all the same colour = black letters/numbers on white background at the front, & yellow background at the back. Vehicles registered over 40 years ago can have optional white or silver letters/numbers on a black background both front & back..

You see a few Irish Republic & European vehicles on English roads, their plates are mostly black on white or yellow, Belgian plates are red on white..

I believe the Florida ones actually have an orange in the background. Illinois is a bluish white with a picture of Abe Lincoln in the back, along with a silhouette of the Chicago skyline and the state capitol building.

Yeah making plates look fancy does seem to be a mostly American thing. I suppose it's a result of state pride. Though there are some boring ones. Michigan and Ohio come to mind. But I suppose even those are more visually interesting than euro plates. And then you got vanity plates, which usually refers to having a particular combo of characters for the number, but there are also different plates you can get. For example my mom's plates are white with our state bird, the cardinal, on the left.

http://www.plateshack.com/y2k/Illinois/ily2k.html

Hope you had a good time in the colonies :P

When I lived in Florida 12 years ago and when I visited in winter the plates were mostly white with green text.

Most states have 1-8 options besides the standard and vintage automobile plates. When I lived in Florida I remember there was a 911 plate that supported fighting terrorism, a plate that supported education etc...those have different colors/graphics. Here in Wisconsin they have green and gold Green Bay Packers plates, and education support plates available...our dealer plates are bare aluminum with black text.

Many Canadians that visit Florida are medical tourists...They can't get some medical care they need under their socialist medical system, and come here to get what they need.

You ALWAYS want what you can't have. Last couple cars I've had I've had ersatz British tags made up to put on the FRONT of my car-"CHG657S", which are my initials-Clarence Henry Geiger, June 1957, & S for Sandy, shithead, whatever... Tennessee used to have Kewl plates-They were a rough outline of the state, orange background w/white lettering, which are the University of Tennessee's school colors. Some people have restored plates like that on their collector cars. The State used to be cool w/that, you paid a one time fee, & kept the plates as long as you wanted. Then, some effin Nitwit decided they were losing too much revenue, & you can still have the antique plates, but you can ONLY use the car in a parade, car show, something like that. They catch you going to the store, general use of any kind, you get arrested, pay a hefty fine, go to jail, the whole 9 yards. And they instructed the cops to REALLY crack down on all the scofflaws who were depriving the state of all the boodle they SHOULD be getting were it not for all those awful miscreants abusing The LAW... Bureaucrats are generally IDIOTS w/NO sense of humor, or fair play...

I'm thinking of getting collector's plates for my 2000 Dodge Dakota pickup for the 20 renewal. It's my understanding that the vehicle could be driven just about all year, except one month (December)?
In Wisconsin, you have to display a plate on the front and rear on the vehicle, but the only plate that gets the month and renewal sticker is the rear plate.

There is a trade in used plates in England: You can transfer plates to another car (costs £80 AFAIK) as long as you don't make it appear newer than it is, plates issued since 1963/64 have a date of issue letter or number.... The 1'st plate to be issued was A1 in 1904, those early plates were 1 or 2 letters then up to 4 numbers, any 1 or 2 letter plate is very expensive in the plate market, the lower the numbers the more they cost, those that spell something go for a lot as well, E.G. RAD 10 (radio) owned by the BBC AFAIK. Rude or offensive spellings are banned but some sometimes slip through the net.

Nowadays the 1'st letter of a plate is an area of registration identifier: mine is F which is issued to the Nottingham & Lincoln offices, the 2'nd is E which is random, (FA to FP is the Nottingham office, FR to FY is the Lincoln office, Q,U & Z aren't used) then 17 which is the year of registration, then 3 random letters. When you sell your car the plates usually stay with it, although you can keep them & transfer it to your new car. (for a fee of course) A few years ago we bought my late Father-in-law an old style plate for for his 70'th birthday, it was L70 EAH, L was for his nick name, 70 for his birthday & EAH his initials, it cost £240 + £80 transfer fee, he transferred it onto 4 different cars he owned...

I think you're the one that got me hooked on the website, "UK vintage radio repair and restoration." A really excellent website! A lot of really sharp technicians contribute information there.
BTW, are you the one that has the RCA CTC16E color set with the PAL conversion?
Dave, USradcoll1 on that site. :thmbsp:

5 years ago when I got the Lincoln I was told that the IIRC 200 cost of the collector plates was justified by their not requiring renewal. I regret not doing it...with the IIRC 75 renewal fee I've already lost money on the standard plates I chose to save money then.

Illinois vanity plates require a yearly renewal at a higher rate than regular. So do Arizona vanity plates. There are a whole slew of special interest plates, especially in Illinois: everything from state University to supporting wildlife or prevention of domestic abuse. Illinois also issues special event plates that are legal for a set number of days. I have a set from a Route 66 Association tour some years back.

Regarding vanity plates, it took me a long time to decide on something until someone told me my 2003 Mercury Marauder was "retro." I settled on RTRO RKT (Illinois will print them with a space, but they are in the system without it), and later transferred the plates to my 2013 Mustang. When I moved to AZ, RTRORKT was taken, so I now have "ITSMYRV."

While Illinois requires front and back for all plates, AZ supplies only the back for regular plates, but both front and back for vanities. Avid car enthusiasts get their knickers in a bind about required front plates, and you can find detachable frames so the fronts can easily be removed for shows and reinstalled for street use. (Your state may frown on this, I don't know.)

If you want to see madness, check out pricing on transferable Delaware black tag plates. The original single and two digit plates are $$$ beyond belief.

http://lowdigittags.com/29.html

When I got my '67 Lincoln Pervertable sedan in 1983, we worked on it for awhile, it was '84 B4 it was really roadworthy. I decided to get a Vanity Plate, I chose "67LNCLN" 'cause EVERYBODY wanted to know what it was. Our family company had also just been bought out by an outfit out of Framingham, Massachusetts. They were generally pretty decent guys, if maybe sometimes a tad slow on the uptake. I came out of the office one glorious spring day, & one of the F'ham boys was looking at my Lincoln, mumbling to himself. I walked up behind him, & he was saying to himself-Six-Seven L-N-C-L-N.... HMMM... Six Seven L-N-C-L-N.... I hollered out to him, "Sixty-Seven Lincoln, Gerald....." And THEN, it was like throwing a Light Switch on... And people think us HILLBILLIES are Dumn....

Here you can buy Northern Irish plates which don't have a year identifier on them, they are usually cheaper than pre 1963 English no year identifier plates, they are 3 letters with an I or Z in them & up to 4 numbers, lots of buses & taxis have them to hide their age. Thinking of buying one myself, seen IIG 2748 for sale at 99 pounds, (about $125) doesn't mean anything but will look unusual as the IIG will look like 11G. A man down the road (in the posh houses) has HAN 50N, you can guess what his name is, my old boss has 11 FR & his name is Frank Randal, in the nearby village of Linby someone has the plate L1 NBY, these plates are worth many many thousands of pounds...

The richest Junk Dealer in town-He made his fortune buying industrial scrap, & selling it VERY high had Tn vanity plates on the back of his V-12 BMW that said "RCHPHKR", which I thought was kinda tacky & was surprised the state let 'em go thru.... He had several class-3 rifles, & always wanted me to come shooting w/him, but I never did. He was just a tad too "Oily" for even me..

Illinois (like all states) bans inappropriate vanity plates, but some slip through, as the department employees are not necessarily up on all slang terms. In AZ, the vanity plate application form asks for an explanation of exactly what it means.

The Wisconsin collector plates on my 1967 Dodge are good forever, and the month they aren't valid is January. However, you can get a temporary permit for $5 to use the vehicle in January to allow for people to relocate the vehicle. https://wisconsindot.gov/Documents/formdocs/mv2750.pdf

.

New Hampshire has a plethora of plates.
https://www.nh.gov/safety/divisions/...ion/plates.htm
Almost all are the colorful "Old Man of the Mountains" - "Live Free Or Die"
type. When we were kids going somewhere plate spotting was a good
way of passing the time. The key plate is Hawaii VERY rare for obvious
reasons. All the rest can be spotted at a tourist trap in a day or two.
If you complete the states do Canada next.
In many states you used to have to get a new plate every year so they
had the year & often changed color. Traditionally in N.H. old plates were
hung in the garage or barn. My uncle had them from the teens on. N.H. people being very frugal ( not cheap ! ) they were often used as roof or wall patches & other projects.

73 Zeno:smoke:
LFOD !

I'm wondering which states I could get away with "ANUSTART" vanity plates :D

I'm partial to the New Mexico turquoise and chile plates. And yes I have 'em on my cars.

Interesting fact: NM plates are the only ones that say USA on them......

The local (Delaware) classifieds always have tags for sale; 5 digits might set you back around a $1k, and things go up from there. All the auction houses have them for sale, too. It's seen as an investment by many. It used to be common for folks to get a premium for their older beater car by making you buy it in order to get its plate.

MD has been making regular changes in recent years, after years of rather plain black/white tags. You can get Historic plates at 20 years; poorly enforced & often abused. I even saw one guy running a trash hauling business with an older F-350, using those cheap plates. If the vehicle is over 50 years old you only have to pay registration once and you're good "forever".

One of the specialty tags is yellow and promotes agriculture with a picture of barn, etc. Oddly, I see lots of these on vehicles from Baltimore, from a certain demographic. I have a theory...that it's supposed to identify purveyors of a cash crop? Unproven. Maybe they just like the color.

I run original '51 tags on my shoebox Ford; you just have to keep the real tags in the car somewhere. A pain to have to deal with the DMV in order to use them.

Noticed that Florida only has back plates, that wouldn't work here in England as most traffic violation cameras take a photo of the front of the car, it's naughty to not have a front plate & the cops will soon stop you. Motorbikes don't have a front plate & a lot of them seem to do what they like. Some naughty people use black insulating tape to change their number plates = make a C look like an O or an F an E etc, then the legal person receives a speeding or red light ticket & has a hell of a job convincing the cops he/she didn't do it, some just pay the fine & take the 3 points on their licence to save the hassle...

Georgia has plenty of plates but SC has even more. They even have one for licensed cosmetologist. In GA. you have to pay extra for all vanity plates now. At one time ham & veteran plates were free.
Now, if your antique car needs plates you can go one of two ways. One way is they have an antique plate with a picture of a model A on it with the prefix HA for hobby antique.
OR, you can find an old plate from the year of your vehicle and just give them the number on the plate. Of course, you still have to pay the fee.
Georgia only has plates on the rear.

It's also common up in the NYC/NJ/PA area for motorcycles (mostly Harleys...) to run a vertical license plate, i.e. a regular plate flipped 90 degrees. NY/NJ don't seem to care, even though it's semi-officially verboten. PA, you can actually get a state-sanctioned vertical plate.

I can say with certainty that the automated toll machines can in fact read the plate no problem. I have pictures to prove it :)

Supposedly they impound your bike if you do that in Florida. Go figure.

Here in Wisconsin you are supposed to have 2 plates, but Dad has been driving his Accord around without a front plate for a decade and despite being given speeding tickets has never been bothered for not having the front plate (the car never had a place to mount a front plate). For about 3 years I have been following his example with my Lincoln Mark V....when the first front bumper got messed up the front plate got chewed up and I simply unbolted the holder off the replacement front bumper to give me an excuse not to bolt on the chewed plate.

Here in Wisconsin there are not many traffic cameras, but you can get and get out of incorrect tickets.... Last year somewhere in Milwaukee a Landover with a different paint color( I know because the ticket had make, model, color, plate number and location parked listed) than my Suburban got a parking ticket and the meter maid recorded my plate number by mistake....I made some calls explaining I'd never been in that area and that my plate had only been on GM vehicles and the ticket was dismissed as the mistake it was.

Several years ago Wisconsin tried to pass legislation only requiring front plates. The police were the main opponents. They (rightly) claimed that the plates are on cars primarily for law enforcement reasons, and if looking for a particular vehicle they can see and read thousands of license plates on vehicles coming towards them in traffic, but can only read the plate in front of them when following a car.

.

Ditto for Illinois.

I got out of a parking ticket a few years ago as they'd put the wrong make of car on ticket, it said it was a Seat, but my car was a Suzuki so ticket was cancelled.

Got stung a few months ago = parked car & saw a sign "one hour free" so went to the shops & came back 30 mins later to a a ticket, asked the parking warden why? He pointed to a very small sign saying you had to get a free ticket from the machine even for the free one hour. Been on local TV news about it being unfair. Also people have got parking tickets via CCTV camera for being stopped in traffic jams, it's getting daft here...

This is a TRUE story


The Governor of New Hampshire recently stepped in and forced the RMV to allow a woman to keep a plate she had for years . The woman , being a Mom , had a message for her kids right there in the car's license plate ;

PB4WEGO

And the RMV had sought to recall the plate because of it's reference to "excretory functions" . I'm glad the Gov of NH has a sense of humor .....

:D

:) Yep , that's the one , Thank you Jim !

I just thought it was funny that I saw that story watching the morning news , and then I saw this thread about plates later in the day , I figured I just HAD to post it :D

Sense of humor cause he his a conservative

73 Zeno:smoke:
LFOD !

I liked the way that U.S.A. licence plate are looking. Seen for real a few in Romania.
I liked that you could have the town put on it. Here in Romania you have the indicative of the county where the care is registred - this means two letters, except for Bucharest which isn't a county and you have B... up untill '000's, Ilfov County (small county that sorrunds Bucharest) had also B, but now it's IF.
Numbers are standard here. You have to have letters close, like you must have like B82DJL, you can't have B 82 D J L. Funny thing that even we where a communist country, I tink up untill '60's people could legally go to different workshops and ask for the manufacturing of licence plates (probably they presented some offcial documents that show they have the right to ask for that service - I will ask more).

Here in England the price of a new car has the plate & registration included in car sale price, the plate issued with the car usually stay's with it till it's scrapped, you never have to buy a new plate unless you want too. You can buy a plate & put it on your car but you have to pay a transfer fee = 80 pounds. (about 100 dollars)

Noticed when I was in Florida that some cars & most buses/trucks had red flashing direction indicators at the back, here in England they have to be orange, however vehicles registered before 1965 can have orange or red at the back, & orange or white at the front.

All new (since 2011'ish) cars have daytime running lights, many of them blue'ish LED's, my DRL's on my Hyundai i10 are ordinary bulbs though. Must admit you can see cars better with DRL's on the cloudy overcast days that we seem to get a lot of here in England...

In the states we still allow the same bulb fillament to serve as brake light and turn signal with a red lense...in Europe that is banned on new cars...l'm not very happy with this standard here because on cars with the center brake light and one turn signal/brake light both burned out you can't tell brake tapping from turn signaling... Also Mopar has had electrical issues in their cars. A month ago I was behind a Jeep SUV most of my commute and the intermittents it had made finding any meaning in it's lights utterly impossible...when the owner stopped I complained of how dangerous it was.

Yes I can imagine if a brake light on one side is duff brake pumping could look like a turn signal...

Few years ago I took my then car in for an MOT (a yearly roadworthy inspection for cars more than 3 years old) it passed with an advisory comment = 'high level centre brake light not working.' I said "will the cops pull me over?" He said "no, they have to be fitted on cars made after 1990'something, but no law that they have to actually work!" I drove like that for ages but never got pulled over...

Some of those 3rd brake lights are a bear to fix; I remember a 90's Taurus that came in the shop. I got it all apart and found out it used LED's, only available as an expensive assembly. If I was better at solid state electronics I'd have took a crack at it. Not long ago my company van was a Transit Connect with a mobile office in the back. The 3rd brake burnt out but we found it could only be reached by totally removing the bolted-in desk/shelf unit. I just lived with it.

They are very strict here in England on letter/number spacing: the new style (from 2001) plates have to be like AB12 ABC, if you have AB 12 ABC it's a warning or fine, if they're the 1964 to 2001 style they have to be ABC 123A or A123 ABC & 1904 to 1964 ABC 123.... Friend of ours called Lisa is a bit naughty as her plate is L1SA T, it should be L1 SAT. She's received a few warnings off the cops so she's pushing it, she could end up having the plates confiscated & issued a normal plate, mind you she is a bit ditzy, lol...

Here in Arizona, when a used car is sold privately, the seller keeps the plate and the new owner has to get a new one. We also have a plethora of vanity plate styles to choose from:

https://servicearizona.com/webapp/ve...startChoice.do

But if the one who sell the cars dosen't want any longer a car?

Hello. Since you are from U.K. you can please explain how the registration numbers are given there. Starting from the past utill now. I've read that they are a combination between area and year.

If the spacing is not per standard, how does one even obtain it? In the two U.S. states I've lived in, the registration forms force you to use standard spacing rules.