Can you make any cash from your old private number plate?

It’s money for old rope really isn’t it?

The status and popularity of these private number plates means that even if you possess something you do not really consider to be that valuable, you can still put it up for sale on the second hand market. You never know, someone, somewhere may have a strong connection association with those exact characters of your number plate, and is willing to part with quite a bit of cash to own it too.

You can search through a number of third party companies who will let you know how much they think your number plate and registration will sell for. According to a study by Carfused, the typical cost of a privately sold plate is £387, so you could make a tidy little sum from it. The analysis also showed that one out of twenty people had spent over £1,000 on a plate, so if you have something trendy you could cash in right now if you think it’s worth it.

If you’re very lucky, your registration plate can spell out a popular word, surname, or set of initials which are without doubt the most popular to be sold around the world as they can mean multiple things to different people, therefore attracting more buyers. One of the DVLA’s biggest successes was the sale of the plate 51NGH, which sold for £254,000 back in 2006.

Sporadically, there may also be the chance to cash in during certain times. After Leicester City’s Premiership victory for example, a number of resourceful individuals had hit the market by advertising in a local newspaper’s classifieds page. The current owner of C1TYS hopes to get around £65,000 for his hopefully sought after plate. Another seller is hoping that there will be a lot of people interested in his ‘L65TER’ plate. Enough interest to earn him at least £10,000 apparently. On the other hand, there’s the normal default plates PL16FOX up for sale for £10,000 and LC56CTY for £5,000.

Also don’t forget that the DVLA released thousands of special R prefix registrations on the 15th April that had previously been withheld too.

We know you love your personalised registrations and thought we should give you the opportunity to secure one of these fantastic R plates before they all go, and get yourself a new plate from us here at Pro Plates to go with it. You can also create show plates, which aren’t road legal, but are great for showing off your car to any Leicester City fans at car shows or other shows of that type.

You can even get the road legal and show plate version if you want, and switch accordingly.