Illegal Number Plates?

Aren't government departments wonderful? They move with such slow, majestic dignity that it's suprising that they ever get anything done.

Ah, no... not wonderful. I meant useless.

In 2001 we were told that it would be fine to display UK national flag emblems on our number plates. In fact we were led to believe that the regulations would be changed to explicitly allow it. It's now 2008 and it is still technically a contevention of the regulations to display them.

In Wales, apparently, some unfortunate people have even been give stress at MoT time, and have been told that these non-regulation plates are enough to justify an MoT failure.

As far as we are aware, that situation was just due to the traditional breaking down of communication between central government and those "on the ground" who are given the job of enforcing ambiguous rules and laws.

Anyway, it is not surprising that many people - especially in Wales - think it is high time that the authorities srted themselves out and got this clarified. To that end, Plaid Cymru have an online petition designed to light a bit of a fire under the relevant bottoms.

If you'd like to participate you will find DETAILS HERE.

International Private Number Plates Price Records

Visitors to Regtransfers.co.uk and Numberplates.com will have noticed how much space has been devoted to record-breaking number plate sales in the last year or so. It's not really surprising, as price records have been set and exceeded with startling frequency as more and more countries gather a base of number plates enthusiasts.

At Regtransfers we try to bring you as much information as possible on our topic. We are building the site into THE information resource for all things to do with UK and international car registrations - and we have only just got started.

Amongst the content we have online are articles listing the most expensive number plates sold in the world. Where we do that we list the prices in local currency of the country where the sale took place as well as in UK pounds. We have found that this actually presents us with some pretty strange challenges as the world of international exchange rates can be a pretty weird one.

One of the things which gave me a headache when checking and updating this information was this:

In one article I revisited past records from a few years ago and compared prices then with prices now. Quite a few of the car registrations concerned were sold in non-UK currencies - in Hong Kong dollars and United Arab Emirates Dirhams, for example. One of the things that had me scratching my head was converting those currencies to quote them in pounds...

A recent sale in Hong Kong (where the currency is the Hong Kong dollar) saw the lucky number 18 sell for 16 million HKD. The previous record was held by number 9 which sold for 13 million HKD in 1994. In order to show these prices in UK pounds I used an online currency converter, first converting 16 million HKD into pounds at current rates. After that I used a similar facility to convert the 13 million HKD from the 1994 sale into UK pounds at exchange rates as they were at that time.

To my surprise, the plate with the higher price in Hong Kong dollars had the lower price in UK pounds. So... er... technically, the plate which holds the Hong Kong record doesn't hold it at all if you convert the currencies into UK. Or does it?

I'm not even sure any more. This is all so confusing that I'm going to have a little lie down. After that I might have another go at trying to understand it.

Or I might not.

Another Emirates Number Plates Auction!

Good heavens... It was only a few weeks ago, in February, that we reported the setting of a new world record for the highest price ever paid anywhere in the world for a personal car registration. Well, over the weekend there was yet another sale of "distinguished number plates" in Abu Dhabi.

The results this time didn't approach the stellar extravagance of the February sale where the number 1 set a new world record, but it did manage to set a new United Arab Emirates record for the most expensive two-digit number sold. The registration 13 was bought for Dh £4.25 million, which is about £571,000 in UK terms.

We sort of wish they'd start leaving bigger gaps between their sales. We need time to get our breath back...