----- Original Message -----
From: "Danny Bosma" <d.bosma@consunet.nl>
To: "Military Vehicles Mailing List" <mil-veh@mil-veh.org>
Sent: Sunday, October 01, 2000 3:14 AM
Subject: [MV] British cherished number sale ??
> Hi list,
>
> I guess this is more for the British listers.
> I recently bought a military vehicle in the UK with a cherished (timeless)
> number.
>
Not entirely true Danny, the UK letters and numbers can be decoded and I
cannot find my "liberated" ex-police reference book or I'd do it for you.
the last two letters denote county of registration and the first with known
issued numbers will give you the year, certainly three letters + three
numbers is pre-war.
> Since I have no use for that number I might be persuaded to sell it.
> It's a three letter three number combination
> RVS . . .
>
You will note the mass of military vehicles at UK shows have the common RSY
or PSU sequence, simply that the owners have asked for an "age related"
registration and SY or SU represent some small county that issued very few
plates at the time so there are a huge series of numbers available. Three
letters + three numbers is not very desirable unless somebody like "Roger
Victor Smallwood" just happens to want his initials on a car and then you'd
need to have a single number like 1 to 5 to be interesting, 69 sells well
(!) as do round hundreds. Pre-war "3+3" plates can be had off the DVLA for
a nominal charge something like 50 UKP plus the standard 80 UKP transfer
charge. Now if you have something like BMW 325 or 850 on a plate you would
get thousands, similarly BOB 8Y; I see a local solicitor has LEG 4L on his
huge Mercedes, just the sort of person who could afford many thousands just
for the vanity.
There could be a snag selling it, the seller has to actually own a vehicle
with that plate and have it registered with our DVLA in his name, usually to
sell a desirable plate you buy a wreck just to register it with the number
and sell the lot doing the formal re-registering with the DVLA to the new
owner who then scraps the old car and transfers the plate to the vehicle he
wants, all this carries a charge from the DVLA of 80 UKP a time.
Incidentally you cannot transfer a number originally issued to a motorbike
to a car and vice versa.
The only people who can sell desirable plate combinations as just that are
the DVLA (Govt) themselves who suddenly recognised that there is huge money
to be made in useful sequences as we have no system of personalised plates
and are auctioning them from the un-issued stocks and further, purposely not
issuing current interesting sequences to new cars that could be sold for a
price later.
Worse, if the vehicle was recently "taxed" for the road then the previous
owner will have got a renewal document that requires him to re-new the tax
or formally notify of "SORN" - Statutory Off Road Notification to the DVLA
or he has as is legally required filled in the lower part of the V5
registration form that you should have recording transfer or vehicle
permanently sent out of the country. Either way if he has ignored the SORN
or sent in the transfer slip the DVLA will "recover" "their" plate number
and are free to re-issue/sell it. The plate numbers are never owned as such
by any of us, they are issued by the Govt and can be taken back.
Richard
Southampton - England
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Oct 24 2000 - 20:55:37 PDT