Whilst the price of gold may now have settled down a little, the long term investor will know that, as a rule, gold will hold its value with inflation. He will also be aware, however, that any profit is subject to Capital Gains Tax.
To a lot of people, displaying a personalized number plate on a vehicle carries the same stigma as wearing excessive amounts of gold. This is an understandable point of view but one which, I think, may obscure peoples awareness of the fact that owning a personalized plate does not mean you have to wear it. It can be held on a retainer (V750 Certificate of Entitlement) at a cost of 25 pounds a year. Another interesting point is that, whilst the value of a personalized number plate will move up with inflation, unlike gold it is not subject to C.G.T. if it is bought privately. (At the time of writing this article, at least).
Obviously, there can be no standardized price for private registrations, as there is with gold, because each one of them is unique which means some will be more desirable than others. This may be off putting to a lot of potential investment buyers as they would be unsure if they were paying the right price for a registration. In reality, though, a market without standardization is the right place to look for a bargain. You just need to know where and what to look for.
Where to Buy
The most important point to remember is; Do NOT buy a registration from an after market dealer. Every dealer will have marked up the price of the number plates they are trying to sell, and if the one you happen to be interested in is being resold for a private owner then, of course, it will have been marked up twice.
So, ideally you should buy a previously unused registration as there will be no previous owner trying to make a profit on it, and also you should be buying from the same place as the dealers, themselves. Unused registrations are only supplied by the D.V.L.A., via their website or at auction.
What to buy
Though each number plate is unique there are a few guide lines that you can use when researching your purchase.
Vehicle registrations were introduced in 1903 starting with A1 and, due to the ever increasing number of vehicles on our roads, have had many different incarnations up to the eight digit registrations of the present day. As a rule, the older, the shorter and the lower the number on the registration, the more valuable it will be.
If you have upward of five thousand pounds to spend then I would suggest you buy a plate beginning or ending in one (e.g.; 1 R.M.L. / R.M.L. 1) as, historically, these have always been the most desirable. As I said before, the best prices will be from the source so you should look out for auction dates on the D.V.L.A. website if you decide you want to buy one of these earlier number plates. A good way to compare prices is to look at the prices achieved by number plates of the type you are interested in, from the last auction, and see what similar ones are going for on the dealer websites.
Whilst a registration that spells out a name is usually a good choice, a random word is often a better one, as it will have a broader appeal should you ever wish to sell it. With this type of number plate the age and length rules do still apply but to a much lesser extent. E5SAY is almost twenty years old with just five characters whereas UP51ART is only eight years old with seven characters but, as you can see, there is an obvious desirability factor to be considered. (The more desirable your number plate, the more valuable it will be at resale.)
If you decide on a word plate rather than your initials then you may want to consider two word plates as well (e.g. FR06 BOX). These plates are generally cheaper than single word plates but, again, the desirability factor plays a large part in the value.
If the sums of money discussed above seem a little high then the best place to look is the D.V.L.A. open sales website. There are a huge amount of bargains to be found here, in fact two of the plates mentioned in this article came from this site at prices that may surprise you (UP51ART was 799 pounds and FR06 BOX was 399 pounds).
The D.V.L.A. do try to price the number plates they are selling according to their market values but with an average of 30 million registrations on their website at any one time and around seven million new ones being added biannually, they inevitably miss, and so under value, thousands of them.
If you can find these plates then you will have found the best value registrations that it is possible to buy because, in doing so, you will have by passed the number plate dealers, the previous owners and the in house price scrutinizers at the D.V.L.A.
No matter which route you take, remember, there are millions of personalized number plates out there so do not rush your choice and try not to follow the herd. Just keep in mind all those worthless B.M.W. number plates that are littering our scrap yards already.
Reg
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