Personalized plates have grown massively in popularity over the years, with the sale of plates raising billions of pounds since they first went on sale through the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) in the late 1980s.
Considering buying a set of personalized plates for your vehicle? We’ve shared eight fun facts and tips below to help you understand your options and get the best possible deal on a set of private number plates for your car.
UK Plates Come in Several Different Formats
UK number plates are available in a variety of formats, from classic plates to modern dateless number plates. This variety of formats gives you plenty of options to choose from when you’re looking for a plate that matches your nickname, initials, or birth year.
You Can Buy Personalized Plates for £100 or Less
Contrary to popular belief, personalized plates aren’t always expensive. There are lots of great personalized number plates available for under £100, although you’ll need to pay slightly more to register the plates for legal road use on your vehicle.
Initial Number Plates Usually Offer the Best Value
When it comes to value for money, you’ll usually find that initial plates — personalized number plates that spell out your initials — offer the best value for money, as there are numerous letters and number combinations available.
Highly Valuable Plates Can Be Worth £100,000 or More
As you may have read in the newspaper or seen on TV, some number plates are worth serious amounts of money. The UK’s most valuable personalized number plates have traded hands for hundreds of thousands of pounds, with new plates often setting valuation records.
If You Want to, You Can Keep Your Old Registration Number
Buying a set of personalized number plates doesn’t always mean giving up your old registration number. If you’d like to, you can pay an extra fee to keep your old registration number, allowing you to revert back to it if you change your mind in the future.
You Can Transfer Your Plates to Another Car, Albeit for a Fee
It’s normal to change vehicles every now and then. If you buy a new car, it’s absolutely possible to transfer your personalized number plates to the new vehicle, although you’ll need to follow a specific legal process to pass the registration to the new car.
The DVLA Bans Some Plates for Being Rude or Suggestive
Although funny number plates are no problem, the DVLA sets the limit at plates that could hurt or offend people. This means that common swear words and other potentially offensive number plates aren’t made available to the public.
If You Get Sick of Your Plates, You Can Sell Them
It’s perfectly legal and quite common to sell personalized number plates. If you get a great offer for your plates, or if you simply want to get rid of them, there are various services that you can use to put the number plates up for sale.
You have to be careful when buying a number plate in the UK because it might not be transferrable to your vehicle for a number of reasons