Personalised car number plates; also known as vanity number plates, prestige number plates, cherished number plates, custom number plates or simply private number plates, are legally permissible types of vehicle registration plates. Typically, personalised number plates are privately paid for by the car owner, in contrast to the free state supplied car registration plates assigned to new cars. Personalised number plates often set out a series of letters and / or numbers to stand for something recognisable, such as a person’s name or initials.
In the US, there are an estimated 10 million cars carrying personalised number plates. In state-by-state surveys it was revealed that Virginia had the highest percentage of cars with personalised number plates (some sixteen per cent), followed by New Hampshire (fourteen per cent), Illinois (thirteen per cent), Nevada (thirteen per cent), Montana (ten per cent), Maine (ten per cent), Connecticut (eight per cent), New Jersey (seven per cent), North Dakota (seven per cent) and Vermont (six per cent).
There is a series of letter / number combinations which are prohibited for use across the US. Letter combinations spelling out such words as ‘God’ and any swear words are not allowed to be used. Some prohibitions are state specific: New York does not allow cars with number plates such as ‘NYPD’ and so on.
Personalised number plates are often collectible items to aficionados. Auctions are common, with highly idiosyncratic number plates being very popular. Rare number plates can also be sold on websites.
