Personalised number plates - What's it all about?

Many of our visitors will be familiar with personalised number plates. Indeed, it is hard to walk or drive along a street these days without spotting a car registration that has, quite obviously, been selected by its owner because of its resemblance to a name or a word. Just as often we see car registrations consisting of some other striking combination of characters - a single letter with a single digit, for example. Who wouldn't notice a top-of-the-range Mercedes with personalised number plates saying TV 1. Surely that would be enough to make one wonder if the car might belong to a television celebrity.

That's all personal plates are: ordinary car registrations selected because, by some twist of the sequential issuing process, they resemble meaningful words, names, initials etc.

Despite the simplicity of the concept, personalised number plates are a hugely popular, and growing, trend. Previously the prerogative of the rich and famous, private plates have now found favour with every section of society, from teenage new drivers to top celebrities of all kinds (Sir Alan Sugar, Amir Khan, Chris Tarrant) and even astute, serious businessmen who are famed for their caution with money (Duncan Bannatyne and Theo Paphitis).

In addition to the fun aspect, and the vanity issue, personalised number plates are also very populat with investors. With good plates selling for hundreds of thousands of pounds, and with demand for prime examples increasing, it is very possible to invest and to see the value multiply over the course of a few years.