Following on from the other personal plates thread, you should know that you are very lucky in the States, that for the most part, you can get whatever plate you want subject to availablity, for next to nothing.

Here in the UK, personal registrations as we call them are huge business.
And I mean HUGE !
We have many dealers selling plates either on commission or ones that they own.

Try...

http://www.regtransfers.co.uk/

Put a short number, like E1 into the search and see what comes up !
That's right....£500,000...thats $881,000. (In case you didn't get it...eight hundred and eighty one thousand dollars !)
Admittedly thats a very old, very short number, but quite ordinary plates are going to ordinary people for what would buy a nice car!
Even the government has caught on....they have regular auctions of previously unissued or discontinued numbers.

go to....and scroll down....

http://www.dvlaregistrations.co.uk/h...Auction/p/next

I'm a fan of the great late Phil Silvers...AKA Sgt Bilko, strangely never as popular in the US as in the UK though generally recognised as one of the greatest comic geniuses of all time.
I thought it would be good to get B 1 LKO and have as BILKO on my car over here.
(And here's the crazy bit by the way...it is illegal to mis-space or mis represent plates to form a word etc., so there is the government selling the damn things then warning you not to tamper with them!)
Anyway, B1LKO did eventually come up for sale...£17.000 ($30,000) which I obviously could not afford or justify, so I got R1LKO for a few hundred pounds and put a black dot in an appropriate spot !

One of our most famous plates was issued many years ago before this business got out of hand....
PEN 15. You can guess that guy is driving round in a car with a long hood....

 

All I know is the plate area on the back of my BMW is about three feet long.
What do European owners of American cars do when when the tags are so much wider than the car manufacturer allowed in design?

 

Strictly speaking the rear plate should be oblong, but there is a little discretion allowed and square plates can be fitted though often the font has to be a little smaller than is strictly legal.

Hope that answers your question.

 

Ummm...I guess I just don't get it why someone would pay that much for a personalized plate? Must be a Euro thing ...Don't get me wrong I think it's cool to have your own distinctive plate but...thousands of $$...I'll put that mulah into the vehicle instead!

Cheers...Mike

02 F-150 4x4 SCrew King Ranch - Estate Green / AZ Beige

 

Yes..it has all got a little out of hand.

The only plus side is that those people who had the foresight to buy good numbers years ago have made by far the best investment that is available anywhere.
In the 1960's a neighbor was offered the chance to have the plate D1 put on a car if he bought a new one prior to the time he normally did.
He turned the chance down.
That was before anyone had thought there would be a Princess Di, of course.

That plate was later offered for sale for over $400,000 !!!!

 

Too funny...it's kind of like the folks that went in and registered all those domain names back in the 90s and are selling them for $$$$ now!

Cheers...Mike

02 F-150 4x4 SCrew King Ranch - Estate Green / AZ Beige

 

That's too funny! Hopefully there's some big tires on that car also!