How To Buy Your Personalised Number Plate

Technically you do not 'buy' a registration plate. They are not property in their own right but are assigned to vehicles by the Government.

What you are paying for is the agreement of the registered keeper of the vehicle carrying the number to apply to the Government's Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) to transfer it to your vehicle. Once the number is transferred, you then acquire the entitlement to transfer it. The DVLA also charges an administration fee of £80.

Specialist companies now exist to sell and buy personal plates with numbers and their prices listed in print and on the internet - along with step by step instructions in detailed 'Q & A' sections.

Many of these companies belong to trade associations such as the Cherished Numbers Dealers' Association (CNDA), which adheres to a code of practice and is affiliated to the Retail Motor Industry Federation, which covers most areas of car and car-related sales and also has a free independent conciliation service in the event of a dispute.

In July 2007 a new Act of Parliament simplified the process of buying and keeping a cherished number plate while also reducing the potential for fraud. The Vehicle Registration Marks Act had been backed by the Cherished Number Dealers Association (part of the Retail Motor Industry Federation), as well as the Government, and the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA), and supported by the police.

As the trade in personalised plates has boomed, the Government spotted an opportunity to rake in some extra cash, so now the DVLA holds back for special auction plates it thinks will earn it a premium.

By law, the registration numbers must also be correctly displayed in accordance with the regulations. Shifting together letters and or omitting spaces, or corrupting numbers to appear as letters (or vice versa) is an offence.

I know this because once, while test-driving an outrageous Dodge Viper, I had my collar felt by an officer of the law who pointed out that part of the cool registration plate HOT had been achieved (and not by me) by putting a black-headed screw head between two numbers 'I and I', to create the horizontal bar of the 'H'.

How much you will pay for a plate is an art rather than a science. Think of the market for personalised plates like the Stock Market or the art market. Those plates which are rare, exclusive or in greatest demand will cost more than those which are more common. As a general rule, the fewer the letters and numbers, the higher the price. Plates which spell out initials, names or appropriate words will cost more.

But you don't need to be a multimillionaire or a mega-bucks celebrity to buy a personalised plate. For while I might pay a small fortune for something like RAY 1, 1 RAY or RM 1, I might just stretch to a less exclusive but no less fun plate for a round about £1,000, or even a few hundred pounds.

Half the fun is in finding a plate which is appropriate to you personally - or to the car it to which the plate is fixed, whether a Porsche '911', a BMW '750' or a Golf 'GTI'.

And the registration could prove an investment should you later decide to sell on.

But beware. It can be ADD1CT1VE.

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