For the price of this license plate you can buy two Bugattis

In Great Britain, various countries in the Middle East and also Australia you can simply buy a license plate. Sometimes they are auctioned off, like this one, which in this case fetched millions.

In the Netherlands you are not allowed to choose your license plate, nor can you trade it (only if you sell your car, because then the license plate moves with you). Is that a shame? Some people think that way.

Personal license plate

We usually find personal license plates a little… well… on the wrong side. We once came across a Belgian Rolls-Royce marked “MARJAN”. And a Range Rover with “DUSHI”.

But hey, it can also be cool if you have a McLaren 765LT with the license plate LT 765 M or something like that. Or a Rolls-Royce Phantom with a simple RR on the license plate.

Millions of dollars

In England, the Middle East and Australia, the general rule is: the less there is on a license plate, the more desirable and expensive it is. Take this as an example: NSW 1.

This license plate is being auctioned online in Australia and with a few days to go, someone has already bid for 10.01 million Australian dollars. That’s more than 6 million euros.

New South Wales 1

Because apparently it is a very special record. The license plate has been in the current owner’s possession for many decades and was awarded to a police commissioner more than a hundred years ago.

The letters in NSW 1 stand for New South Wales, the Australian state where the original owner was the highest police chief. Sometime in the 1930s the record was purchased by Sir Frederick Stewart.

He was the founder of Australian National Airways (Australia’s KLM until the 1950s), entered politics and was a minister in several cabinets. Stewart died in 1961.

When his widow died in 2000, there was already intense speculation in Australia. Would NSW 1 come to market? No, that didn’t happen. Until now…