I just wrote this as a reply on a forum then thought, I might as well post it here.
See what you think;
A friend of mine went to a DVLA auction a couple of years back with the intention of buying a ***1 or 1*** number plate.
Within reason, he wasn't fussy about the letter combination as he was thinking in terms of investment/heirloom.
At the auction, he soon realised that he was being out-bid by one man on every '1' plate that came up.
During an interval, the auctioneer approached my friend and explained that his rival was a dealer and suggested that he ask the dealer to 'step aside' on just one of these number plates, so as he could buy it and bugger off. This would leave the dealer with no competition on the rest of the one plates, ergo he could buy them cheaper.
A win/win situation you'd have thought but no.
The dealer refused this proposition and my mate, being a stubborn git, stayed for the duration of the auction just to bid the dealer up on every '1' plate.
When relaying this tale to me, he couldn't grasp the reasoning behind the dealers decision not to step aside as, over the course of the auction, this cost him "10's of thousands".
As I explained to him. It's all about the bigger picture.
It won't matter to the dealer if you beat him up by 1K on every plate at the auction.
(He claims that the most any of them sold for was 8K, BTW)
What's important is that he gets 'control' of as many of this type of number plate as possible that come onto the market.
If you control 80% of a commodity, then you control the open market price of it.
The other 20% are not going to complain if you force the market price up.
Reg
