What should you do if owning an expensive automobile isn’t enough to get that feeling of uniqueness?Buy a prestigious license plate.
Not only Russians have a passion for license plates that emphasize the owner’s high status. Governments of many countries use this not-exactly-healthy desire to stand out in traffic for a good cause, issuing prestigious license plates at charity auctions and not under the counter at registration offices.
For instance, in Great Britain the Essex county authorities auctionned the F1 license plate first issued in 1904. It was bought by the great Formula 1 fan Afzal Kahn, owner of the namesake Kahn Design, the tuning company, who paid 375,000 pound sterling for the license plate ($741,000). This is without taxes – in the end the unique plate is going to cost him 440,625 pounds ($871,577).
The happy Brit not in the least regrets the money spent. He already installed the new license plate on his McLaren SLR, and the money received by the auctioneers will be spent to finance the county driving schools. The previous record sum for a British license plate was paid in July 2006. 331,000 pounds were paid for an M1 license plate by an anonymous buyer.
Twice as little (£154,100) was paid last summer on eBay for the license plate with a letter-number combination CEO 1. This lot still holds the Guinness record as the priciest license plate sold through the Internet. It’s worth mentioning that the CEO 2 plate was sold for only 10,000 pounds – looks like it’s not as prestigious to be CEO number 2, though still a CEO!
In the UAE there are more petrodollars per capita, so the sums that people are willing to pay for a pretty plate are higher. The less figures there are on the plate the more prestigious it is. The most expensive are numbers from 1 to 10. In the second category are numbers from 10 to 99. Oil tycoons are also willing to pay for license plates with the same name as their car model. The UAE is the world’s biggest spender as far as license plates are concerned.
The latest record is over $14 million – exactly that much was spent by Saeed Abdul Gaffar Khoury for a plate with only one figure - 1. Saeed Abdul actually thinks that it was a real bargain because he expected to pay twice as much. Note that it’s the 3rd one-figure number in the Khoury family: last May Talal Khouri paid $6,7 and $2,9 million respectively for the plates with numbers 5 and 7. Now the former adorns his Rolls-Royce which costs significantly less than its number plate. As for Saeed Abdul, he’s yet to decide which of his many cars will carry the plate.
However, the little quirks of Arab Sheikhs can be justified: the funds raised at the auction will be used to help road accident victims.
In Hong Kong where the Department of Transport is responsible for holding such auctions the record sum was paid for a license plate with a figure 9 sold in 1994 for 13 million Hong Kong dollars (1,6 million US dollars). The figure 2 plate sold a year earlier was $0.5 million cheaper than that. Nameplates sold by the Hong Kong authorities went in stock 2 years ago but are not quite as popular yet: the most expensive "I Love You" plate was sold to an anonymous Hong Kong female resident in 2006 for $180,000 – well, almost for nothing.
In the USA license plates are not so often sold openly, so unscrupulous officials have some freedom of action, just like in Russia. However, it’s much more likely that they go to jail for that in the US – ask the former governor of Illinois George Ryan who is serving a sentence of 6,5 years for issuing “pretty” plates in exchange for donations to his election fund. However, there’s one state where you can absolutely legally buy the plate you like. It’s Delaware.
In this very state the day after the record-breaking auction in Abu Dhabi where the 1 plate was sold for $14,2 million another record was set, this time for the USA. Businessman Frank Vassallo IV from Wilmington bought the plate with number 6 for $675,000. Just like with the Khourys, it was a family tradition: the Vassallos already own the plate with the figure 9 bought in 1993 for $185,000, as well as the 27. However, there’s a difference between the Arab and US businessmen: members of the Khoury family are not going to sell their expensive plates under any circumstances. As for Frank Vassallo, he views the plates as good investment. “Their price is growing faster than S&P 500”, says the 25-year-old entrepreneur.
Though it’s not possible to buy a single-figure plate in Russia, there are many plates from the prestigious series that cost tens and hundreds thousand dollars, depending on how influential the department that issued the series is. You can find a more detailed price list in the Internet or ask a traffic policemen friend – off-the-books, of course.
Kamchatka Krai police found an unusual way of resisting the fans of “pretty” license plates. Now the plates with 3 same figures or letters are issued only to garbage and cesspoolage trucks. The regional police authorities think that this action will decrease the excitement around prestigious plates and save the issuing officials the temptation to accept a "donation" for the plate.
| Plate | Price | Country |
| 1 | $14 000 000 | UAE |
| 5 | $6 700 000 | UAE |
| 7 | $2 900 000 | UAE |
| 9 | $1 600 000 | Hong Kong |
| 2 | $1 100 000 | Hong Kong |
| F1 | £440 625 ($871 557) | Great Britain |
| 6 | $675 000 | Delaware, USA |
| M1 | £331 000 ($607 000) | Great Britain |
| CEO 1 | £154 100 ($306 000) | Great Britain |
| 9 | $185 000 | Delaware, USA |
| I Love you | 180 000 | Hong Kong |
| CEO 2 | £10 000 ($20 000) | Great Britain |
Alexey Nikitin
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