Personalized and cherished DVLA prefix license plates. Call them what you like, but there are 5 types of custom license plates for sale that include Irish registrations. They are, in chronological order, Cherished license plates that were originally issued from 1901 to 1963. Suffixed license plates that have a year letter at the end of the plate that were issued from 1963 until they ran out of letters in 1983. Then DVLA issued prefix numbers from 1983 to August 2001 and more recently the plate style is the new registration number style.
The most popular of these styles is undoubtedly the prefix style plate. The reason is simple. When the DVLA became involved in the sale of private license plates, this was the type of license plate that was issued at the time. As a result, they kept all the attractive numbers like 1-20 from the release to the garages so they could sell them to the public. After 12 months, most of the popular letter combinations had been sold, so DVLA decided to keep an even larger selection of numbers for sale. Numbers like 22, 33, 44 and so on. This meant that they now had almost three times as many records for sale.
These days, new-style plates are released every six months, and while there are hundreds more combinations for sale, prefix-style plates still outsell new-style plates by a ratio of three to one, which which shows that they are still the most popular style. license plate on sale today.
The prized records were, and still are, the most revered private plates. Early single number and single letter registrations will always look amazing on any car. The likes of A 1, the first record issued, to V 1 and Y 1 who are among the last, can’t help but turn heads every time they’re seen.
Prefix registries have made a belated appeal to the public who want something different without breaking the bank. They are more attractive than a DVLA prefix registration, but not as widely available as during the period they were issued when prized number plates without year letters became desirable. As a result, many of the prefix style plates seen for sale today come from the DVLA auction.
The new-style car registration plates that will appear on all new cars for another 40 years don’t really inspire much interest unless they spell out a word or a name like BR15 TOL or PR05 PER. Only then will they really be worth more than their original sale price.