Cherished number plates are generally regarded as the dateless style of a personalised plate that has no year identifier on them to determine the age of the registration. Dateless number plates date back as far as 1903 when the very first vehicle was registered with the number plate A1. These car registrations are usually the most expensive because of their age, rarity, and the fact that they can be as short 2 or 3 characters. An example of an early dateless registration would resemble MD 11 or 1 KD

Suffix Style car registrations first appeared in February 1963 and ran until July 1983. This was the next style of registration mark issued by the DVLC once most areas in the country ran out of the dateless or Cherished type of plate. This type of number plate starts with 3 letters and has numbers between 1 and 999 and ends with a letter which depicts the year of issue. An example would be ABC 3F. This type of number plate has become more and more popular in recent years due to the surge in personalised plate values as they tend to be a little less expensive than the dateless equivalents.

Prefix style registrations came into force when the suffix plates ended in July 1983 and continued being issued until the end of August 2001. They were the exact reverse of the Suffix format as the number plate started with a letter to show the year of issue, then a number and then 3 random letters. We have thousands of DVLA prefix registrations for sale as they are by far the most popular sellers, they are very reasonably priced and can be registered to a vehicle within 3 to 4 days. We can also arrange to send a retention certificate for this type of number plate in just a few days too.

When prefix car registration plates came to an end in 2001 with the Y prefix, DVLA had to introduce a new system to register new cars. The new style registration started with an area code to determine which part of the country the car was first registered to and ended with 3 random letters. The plate also includes two digits in the middle which represent the year the registration was issued. 02 would be 2002, 03 would be 2003 and so on. This is a great type of personalised registration if you should want two sets of initials on the same reg.

You can search over 40 million New Style DVLA Registrations here

Northern Irish registration plates are a great way to disguise the age of a car as there is no age identifier, but they do include the letter I or Z or sometimes even both. This number plate style is very popular with fleet owners such as coach companies and haulage companies who don’t want to let on to the age of their vehicles. It’s also very popular for drivers of high value cars who also want to disguise the age. An example of this style is PXZ 3478. We carry an extensive stock of this style from less than £100 and we can generally transfer them the same day if required.

The DVLA have literally millions of registrations that have never been released on vehicles and these include all the styles mentioned above. All the DVLA Auction registrations carry a buyer’s premium, and they are all subject to VAT. The auctions are generally held every few weeks and if you’re lucky you can pick up a bargain however its always worth checking what's on the market before committing to a bid.