I have a set of 1930 California License plates. Does anyone know why these are only 3 digits? Almost all of the ones I have seen are 6 digits.
At that time period in Pennsylvania, they started with number 1 and went up. Number 1 went to the governor, number 2 went to the vice governor, ect. Low number plates are generally coveted by plate collectors.
WOW! Must have belonged to the Lieutenant Vice Governor. Or the State Attorney General. Maybe even the Governor's brother in law. Would be interesting If you could track down who the plate was originally issued to. But I doubt if the BMV is going to be of much help.
But it does look odd that the bead around the edge of the plate is depressed rather than raised as the numbers and letters are. Do you have other old plates that are stamped this way?
I wonder if there’s some archived info somewhere that could be researched. It would be pretty cool to know exactly where it was used.
There's likely a lot of archived info in the various Motor Vehicle departments' records, but they don't divulge this info generally.
I have a yellow 1941 Ontario Plate 5X5. I thought it was part of the war effort or military tag. Anyone know anything about it?
My woody has a 3 digit plate, if you do not count the county code . Compared with the front plate you can see there were an assload of plates put out for the county.
My grandmother had IL plates that had "HFK 3" (the first letter of her 3 names and the number 3). When she first got it, she was friends with the then Sec of the State of Illinois. Sometimes its a matter of who you know. She had that plate number for at least 30 years!
When I was a kid, our next door neighbor was the stereotypical little old lady who kept her four digit license plate number for many years (2078 if I remember right) and had all of them going back to the 1930's hanging in her garage.
This doesn't have much to do with the original post; but in the 1960's (and probably still today) in Missouri: plate #1 went to the Governor plate #2 went to the Lieutenant Governor plate #3 went to the Attorney General plate #4 went to the Secretary of State etc. on down the line I imagine most states do the same or similar. I was working construction one summer in nearby Jefferson City while still in high school, about 1968 or so. One of the other guys yelled inside to me and said something to the effect of "you're in trouble; there's someone in a car out here that you need to come out and talk to." Outside I go and there's a BIG black Cadillac limousine in the street with license plate #3. Turns out it was only my brother driving the Attorney General's car. Brother was a college student at the nearby college and was also an intern (or something) at the AG's office. The AG had sent Larry to the grocery store for his wife, in the AG limo. Brother just dropped by to say hi. fwiw; that AG went on to become a US Senator and then the US Ambassador to the UN. I guess folks who have power can have underlings do just about whatever they want including grocery shopping.
Contact the ALPCA.Org. It is an association that deals with license plates and all the history. They even have a monthly publication plus blue book values of every state,territory and years. I was a member at one time.It is 10K member plus strong and has yearly conventions. I joined so I could complete my collection of 1932 Lic plates.For example I needed a '32 Alaska plate .They are quite rare.Only 4K registered vehicles in '32 .Hawaii which I thought would be rarer ,not so .There were 40K registered vehicles.Found it in their classifieds.
The Jalopy Journal
