Number Plates as an Investment

When interest rates for savers aren’t at rock bottom people are still interested in investing money in their passion such as racehorses, antiques or wine. Can number plates as an investment and a passion?

Only 12% of buyers bought number plates clinic as an investment. But things may be changing as number plates have been around for 112 years and some early plates are still in circulation with interesting stories of their own.

M 1, was owned by Maurice, son of Alan, Third Lord Egerton of Tatton, both motoring enthusiasts.  The plate was sold for £331,500 in July 2006 to an anonymous wealthy businessman.

S 1 was sold for £397,500. It was the car registration issued in Edinburgh in 1903 to Sir John MacDonald, a former Lord Justice Clerk of Scotland, motoring pioneer and a founding member of RAC.

John Collins purchased 25 O for a whopping £518,000 in 2014. The plate is registered to a Ferrari 250 SWB that was formerly owned by Eric Clapton.

These top-selling plates are known as “Cherished” or “Dateless” plates as the letters and numbers do not indicate the year of issue. People like separate sets of letters and numbers. These plates were issued between 1903 and 1963. Many reg from this period cannot be used as the vehicles been scrapped. New dateless plates come on the market as the DVLA sells registrations from previously unissued sequences.

Dateless plates were then replaced by suffix plates in 1963. Prefix plates were issued from 1983 until 2001 when the current style of plate was introduced.

Suffix, Prefix and Millennium plates can fetch good prices because they contain popular initials or make interesting words such as :

T33 RRY

BL14 DES

TH16 TLE

L41 JRA

CH15 SEA

NOL 14N

But remember, with all investments, prices can go down as well as up.