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Vanity Plates?

taylorwilsdon

taylorwilsdon

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Nov 16, 2006
1,870
13
New York City
Wondering if anyone has put "personalized" (vanity) plates on their car.

My birthday is July 7th (7/7) and I thought it would be cool to get 7SEVEN as my license plate. If its really only $50, I think that would be an okay deal.

How long does the process take? I've got a new car (registration isn't even finished) so I'm guessing I'd have to wait until the reg is in my name before I order new plates.
 
I don't really see the point of vanity plates, but if I were to get some I would follow the state format but make a few tweaks, i.e. 101-WTF. I think that they're a bit too pompous, but that could just be me.
 
I posted this a while back in another thread:

On my car, I have a "Low-Number Reserve Plate" which is very difficult to obtain here in Massachusetts - political connections can secure one, and/or various government jobs - but since 1997, the state RMV holds a lottery so 200 members of the "general public" can vie for one. Low number plates are NOT vanity plates (which must start with two letters), but rather plates that start with numbers or a letter but have less than the six digit norm. My particular plate dates from the 50s, and has been passed down to me from my grandfather. My father has a low digit number as well, highly sough after items here. Both plates are family heirlooms; people find it odd that one could have such an attachment to a set of numbers / letter combinations.

Mine are in "X 9999" series, and "999 X" series - but Reserve Plates can run the gamut from "1" to "99999," mush more impressive than any vanity plate IMO.
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Some states might not, like Massachusetts, allow a vanity plate to start with a number, or intermix letters and numbers. In Mass, you can do something like "AA 1234" but not "A 1234." Be sure to inquire about this... Your state's DMV / RMV website should have that information.

D'oh: Look here, they even used my "A 1234" example. Heh.
 
Every vehicle my family owns has vanity plates on it. They start with our initials and then some sequence of numbers that means something to us.

I much prefer the vanity plates, there is something about having them, but to each there own.
 
my parents have had BRN2SKI for as long as I can remember...

yg17 said:
I want to get OMGWTF but I don't think that will get past the DMV
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you never know, give it a try....

either its already taken in Maine or not allowed:

"Sorry, Plate Number: OMGWTF with class code Passenger (Passenger) is unavailable. Please try another selection."
 
Big-TDI-Guy said:
I've always wanted the plate: 3M-TA3

But my state will not allow it. :(
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Old friend of mine worked with a guy who has a plate that says "D-SHIZT". They changed their mind a short time later and told him he could keep it but couldn't run it on his car.


FrankieTDouglas said:
Go to Maine. Every other plate is a vanity.
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Or illinois. was there yesterday and about every other car was a personalized plate.
 
I once saw H1OAG on a big jet black Kawasaki ZZR-1100. I was seriously jealous :)

Would I get a personalised plate? Probably not, but some of them can be quite cool.
 
brn2ski00 said:
my parents have had BRN2SKI for as long as I can remember...



you never know, give it a try....

either its already taken in Maine or not allowed:

"Sorry, Plate Number: OMGWTF with class code Passenger (Passenger) is unavailable. Please try another selection."
Click to expand...

I might give it a shot. There are a couple others I have in mind too. Missouri is limited with 6 letters though, I wish they allowed 7 or 8 like some other states

cantthinkofone said:
Or illinois. was there yesterday and about every other car was a personalized plate.
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I'm pretty sure, and someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but Illinois gives out free personalized plates which explains why they're so common
 
Last year, state officials notified nearly 10,000 holders of license plates with the letter combination "WTF" that they could get a replacement at no charge after officials learned that the combination is a common acronym in text messaging for a vulgar phrase, "What the ..."

But while tracking down the errant plates, no one at the Division of Motor Vehicles checked their own Web site. "WTF-5505" is shown as a sample of a personalized plate, Dan Kane reports.

"I can't believe it," DMV Commissioner Bill Gore said Monday when alerted to the situation. "Obviously, I didn't know it was there."
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wtf.jpg



As I drive a Golden Eagle Jeep Wrangler, I prefer the eagle Wildlife plate.
 
All this depends on the state.

In Illinois for example, there's a difference between Issues, Personalized and Vanity plates. There's a slew of specialty plates too, but let's not talk about them.

In Illinois, a personalized and Issued plates are have to be letters first, than numbers, no mixing. Further defined that Issued are, well, issued by the state, whereas personalized are chosen by you.

I had a personalized plate years ago, it was PATMAN9 (Ironically, I was able to later get the same plate in CA when I lived there). At the time it was an $85 one-time fee added to original registration, standard annual renewal rates from then on.

The moment you ask for a plate that breaks this number-letter rule, you enter vanity plate land. You still cant mix them together, so we're talking all letter or all number. I got my Vanity plate and it was cheaper than the Personalized I got years ago I think it was $65, then regular annual renewal.

So it's possible that personalized are veeery cheap - or even free.

I'm thinking this is possible because of the really huge number of specialty plates like Peace, State Bird, Veteran, etc which are very very expensive.

So now I have LIC PLT

I can't believe nobody else in the entire state of how many millions of folks didn't think of it first.
 
I have vanity plates (for NYS) and the initial cost to print it, cost $50.. But every year I pay between 50-100 for special plate renewal. And it took, between 4-8 weeks to get my plates.
 
I don't know about the price, but we do have the same birthday. Personally, I think vanity plates are tacky.

Don
 
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