Help & FAQs about buying private number plates

No, you can only display a registration that is either of the same age from the first date of registration of your vehicle or older. It is illegal to have a registration number that makes your vehicle look younger than its first date of registration. For example, if your vehicle was first registered in October 2003 it will be likely to have a '53' plate, therefore you can only replace tis with either another 53 plate or any of the older new style (52, 02 etc) or any prefix, suffix or dateless plates.

If you contact us we can conduct a market wide search with other dealers on your behalf in an attempt to find that special registration. If it is simply unavailable we will do our very best to come up with suitable alternatives within your budget.

As a rule, the older, more rare plates are more expensive than those still being supplied by the DVLA (both new style and prefix). However there are always exceptions, where a registration makes a word or name, this applies to any format and the more characters used in context in the registration the greater the value. So for example a registration like 'CDF 1' has an immediate value of tens of thousands of pounds, but something like Y106 PUR has relatively no value at all.

All our registrations are sold on certificate, either a V750 or V778 depending whether purchase is from our stock or from one of our customers.

The official purchaser is either the original purchaser of the certificate prior to it being assigned to a vehicle or after it has been assigned to a vehicle the person who is named as the Registered Keeper on the V5C (logbook).

The nominee is the person named on either the V750 or V778 as the person who has the rights to assign the registration to a vehicle registered in their name. It is therefore important when buying a registration from us that we know what the exact name of the person is as it appears on the V5C.

The registration needs to be assigned to your vehicle before you can you can display the physical plates.

Assigning is the official process of transferring the registration number from certificate to the vehicle.

Yes, you will need to officially assign your new registration to your vehicle before you can display your new number.

Unless you apply to keep your old registration on retention, it will be reclaimed by DVLA and you will loose all your rights to it even though you still have the physical number plates. In the event that you choose to remove your new cherished number from your vehicle where you are either selling the vehicle or its been badly damaged in an accident the chances are that DVLA will re-issue the original registration, so it might be wise to keep the old plates for future use.

Where the certificate has been supplied on a retention certificate (V778), it is likely that you have purchased the registration from one of our customers, therefore until you assign the registration to your vehicle the previous owner will remain the Grantee (official owner) of the registration. It is therefore very important that you assign the registration prior to the certificate expiry date. If you fail to do this the original owner will need to renew the certificate on your behalf.

Stock that we either own or is supplied directly from DVLA are subject to VAT and a Department of Transport (DoT) £80 assignment fee, however, where we are selling on behalf of a customer, VAT is not charged but in some instances the assignment fee may be passed on to the purchaser.

In a lot of cases the answer is yes. Stock which we either own or are selling on behalf of a customer have been valued on what we consider the correct market price to be, however you may have a different opinion on what you are prepared to pay, we will always consider any offer we get on any number plate and in most cases we will carefully consider your offer.

Where we are selling new plates from DVLA supplies there is relatively no scope for offers unless multiple purchases are made, so in these instances the selling price would always be the price shown on the website.