Show Plate Facts
Since show plates became popular, billions of pounds has been spent by people securing the perfect registration plate for their car. Since 1989, the DVLA has made around £2 BILLION for the UK treasury by creating and selling personalised and unique show plates.
With customers wanting to add personality, character, individuality and an element of style to their cars, show plates is a business that continues to be popular to this day.
A seemingly small part of the car, there are a lot of facts around number plates that most of us don’t know, so educate yourself about those seemingly inconsequential bits of plastic on the front and back of your car with our little guide of facts…
The first registration plate ever issued in the UK was ‘A1’…
It was issued in 1903 and was owned by Earl Russell. The story is that he made his Butler queue up overnight in order to secure the first registration plate in the UK. Imagine what it’d be worth now!
Personalised plates are more common on ‘normal’ cars…
In the 1970’s, personalised show plates were the reserve of the rich and famous, used on prestige and expensive cars. Nowadays, the private number plate is so popular that more are fitted to mid-range cars than luxury makes and models.
The average show plate price…
In the UK currently stands at £512. There are a number of factors that influence the price of a show plate in the UK, but according to the latest figures (published in 2017), the average price of a personalised number plate in the UK stands at £512.
The highest price ever paid…
For a show plate in the UK is a whopping £518,000. For that price you could buy 40 brand new Ford Fiestas – the most popular car in the UK at the time of writing.
The World Record…
In 2008 a man called Abdul GhaffarKhouri bought the number plate ‘1’. His reason? “It’s the best number to own”. It didn’t come cheap though – for the privilege of owning the plate he had to pay a huge £7.25m.
There’s a banned list…
The DVLA keep a list of banned plates that is 456 pages long. The list includes racist, sexist, ageist and extremist words alongside the more common swear words and crude names for body parts. The list is added to yearly as words change meaning and people try ever-more creative ways to express themselves!
Number plates can be owned by non-drivers…
When you buy a plate, you are buying a registration – there are no rules saying it has to be used on a car. You could hang it in a pub, on your wall at home or give it as a gift. As long as you renew your registration annually, you own the rights to it!
So there we are – a series of facts about those little bits of plastic you see attached to the front and back of every vehicle in the land! Now you can impress/bore your friends with your fascinating number plate trivia!