Personalised Car Number Plate Information & Cherished Number Plate Background.
Cherished Market
The original "cherished" registration marks (i.e. those without a year-letter at all) have all increased in value over the years - some to an incredible extent.
Remember, this cherished market covers the years 1904 to 1963 so, by definition, even the last car registration marks issued are now approaching 40 years old, with the earliest ones being over 100 years old. We liken this end of the market to the antiques market.
DVLNI Irish Market
The Northern Ireland mark, once considered the "poor relation," providing cheap cover number plates only, can no longer be regarded in this way.
The most sought after are probably cherished registration marks spelling names, for example the "_AZ’s" from Belfast, the "_IL’s" issued by Enniskillen, not to mention the "_IB’s" coming out of Armagh.
So you can make BAZ (Barry), DAZ (Darren), GAZ (Gareth / Gary), JIL (Jill), GIL (Gillian), plus GIB (Gibson), all of which have increased in value over the years.
DVLA Suffix Year-Letter Market
If you want to start investing and you haven’t got thousands to spend, this is where you should start.
There has always been a reasonable interest in car registration marks such as SUE 57W - in other words, anything spelling a name, but there has been a marked surge in interest recently. These marks are becoming very collectible as people try to wrestle with the new format plates, and so are likely to go up in value.
The aforementioned holds true for popular initials too, where people now regard these suffix year-letter number plates as the "new" cherished plates. In other words they are looking at the index at the front rather than the year letter, so initials such as "JAS," "JMW" and "MAW" appear first, followed by numbers and lastly the year letter.
The shorter the number plate, the better, as with the "proper" cherished marks. Obviously, such a mark on a new BMW or Mercedes is clearly a cherished number plate since suffix marks finished in 1983 so, even the later car number plates over 20 years old.
DVLA Prefix Year-Letter Market
Masses and masses of plates have been bought and sold in this market. This is where the vast majority of people started "making their mark." As with any mass market, most of the examples will not increase in value and represent a bit of fun for their owners.
However, there are some exceptions, - top class A1’s and A11’s, not to mention M1’s, H1’s and M12’s would all command massive profit margins. Furthermore, prefix plates are worth investing in represent names, e.g. the most expensive plate ever sold was K1 NGS at over £230,000.
DVLA New Style Plates
When the prefix car number plates ran out in 2000, a new type of registration mark was invented with the two, area-identifier letters at the front plus two numbers (e.g. '51' representing Sept 2001), followed by 3 random letters.
Finally, you can’t flash your building society book or your share certificates at people, but your special car number plate makes a public statement about you, while increasing at the same time.
If you’ve got it, flaunt it!
Currently searching over 45 million car registration numbers

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