The sale of personalised number plates has surged in recent years, with figures obtained by the BBC showing that more than 1.2 million transactions took place in 2024, up from approximately 500,000 in 2014. The data, obtained from the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA), includes plates purchased directly from the DVLA as well as those changing hands privately. Private plates increasingly represent an investment opportunity with the most lucrative combinations fetching hundreds of thousands of pounds. There are, however, plates available for as little as £50.
According to experts, personalised number plates are seeing increased popularity among young people who are looking for plates with meaning and value for money. Noor Dar, a 17-year-old from Manchester, enjoys deciphering the messages behind plates and browses Facebook groups where different combinations are shared. He states that “it’s all about image. There are two sides, I think. Yes, you have collectors, people who buy cherished plates. Then there’s the younger generation, who aren’t bothered about plates that are valuable”. He adds that, on social media, people in the car scene are often known by their number plates.
Neal Bircher, a self-proclaimed “number plates nerd”, has been collecting them his entire adult life and has a collection of about 220, most of which are for sale. Bircher has plates representing his first and second names and GL05, for Gloucestershire, the county where he was born. He says in the distant past the DVLA had seen personalised plates as an inconvenience but, in the 1990s, changed its mind and chose to engage with the trade, making its vast pool of unused registrations available to the public. The DVLA raised £276m for the government from personalised registrations in the last financial year.
There are both collectors and investors who see value in personalised number plates, which can be bought directly from the DVLA via its website or online auctions. Private dealers also sell previously used plates through third-party dealers, who sell them at private auctions and on their own websites, as well as on Facebook groups and eBay. The value of a private number plate depends on the popularity of the combination of numbers and letters, and Mark Reynolds, sales manager at Plate Hunter, one of several private dealers, says he sold the number plate KS1 just before Christmas for £285,000 to an anonymous buyer with the same initials
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