I have noticed that regular passenger cars in Delaware have a license plate number that is either 5 or 6 digits in length… and that’s it. No letters at all. Quick math gives me only 990,000 possible plate combos. Is it possible that Delaware has never had more that 990,000 passenger cars registered in the state?
I find that very hard to believe. Anyone know anything about this, or how the state numbers their plates?
Thanks,
Chief Wiggum
I can’t help with Delaware, but keep in mind that the number of digits is also a factor. You have all the 5 digit plates and all the 6 digit plates.
Texas used to distinguish between cars [6] and trucks [5] this way.
The population of Delaware in 1990 was 666,168 and it’s 1997 estimate was 731,581. Delaware also has 818 registered vehicles for every thousand in the population, which works out to 598,000 vehicles.
(The World Almanac is wonderful.)
If Delaware reassigns numbers taken out of service (or lets you keep the same number when you get a new car), there should be plenty with just numbers alone.
Delaware has a population as of 1997 of 731,581. There are 818 motor vehicles per 1000 population, leaving just under 600,000 cars. (The World Almanac is wonderful.)
So 990,000 licenses should be plenty. They just have to recycle numbers when cars are sold.
To add a few points:
They do recycle numbers.
Delaware has a different numbering scheme for commercial vehicles (the letter “C” then the number) so these don’t use up any of the 6 digit numbers.
Station wagons, mini-vans and sport-utes get a license plate number that begins with PC (Little P atop a little C) - it’s sort of like the “C” designator, but I’ve never known what it really stood for - anyway, this also reduces the number of numbers used.
If you’re willing to pay extra (a LOT extra) you can get one of the white on black “antique” license plates with very low numbers. Don’t know if they use the same series of numbers for this as for the regular plates.
Though, with the growth the state is seeing, I don’t know how long the 6 digits will last.
Is Delaware the only state that simply prints the number on the plate? Every other state plate I’ve seen, then numbers and letters are stamped into the plate as well as painted.
Another licence plate question: several years ago, to expand it’s number base, Virginia included Q, X, I, O, and Z for use in plate numbers. One series of plates from this was a “PQR-###” format. But every PQR plate I’ve seen, the R is in a different font from the PQ or the numbers. Why?
I just stumbled upon this old thread. No one seemed to have mentioned another factor in DE. The original plates starting with “1” to…unsure (at least 66206) are plain, black and white plates WHICH go with the vehicle. I understand the lower numbers can be worth quite a lot, so a person selling a car with these old plates CAN ask even more for the car!
Also, once above 999, a little white diamond appears between the first digit and the rest…although at first glance it looks like a hyphen. However, it is a diamond for “The Diamond State” state nickname.
FWIW, I seem to recall that the cutoff for the B&W plates is somewhere around 87000. If your plate is below that number, you can use one of the B&W plates, which are made of enameled porcelain. In the very early days, many states and provinces used enameled porcelain plates, but most moved to the stamped metal variety before 1920. Delaware’s B&W plates are based on the 1942 porcelain base plate, which was renewed with a sticker (or maybe a metal tab??) However, many (if not most) of the B&W bases you see today are replicas. Delaware was the last state to use porcelain license plates-- probably by a margin of 20 years. There is a company that manufactures those porcelain B&W plates for you if you have a low enough registration number. But there are probably quite a few real 1942 base plates riding around Delaware with 2001 expiration decals on them!
As for AWB’s first question, Delaware was the only non-embossed state for many, many years, but recently some other states have switched from embossed to non-embossed, especially in producing “specialty” graphic plates. I have seen personalized NY plates and graphic plates from Missouri that are not embossed; there are probably others I’m not thinking of. (I personally don’t like these-- they look fake to me, like something you bought at a carnival!) Some states have even made “de-bossed” plates, where the numerals are indented rather than raised. I have a 1974 Colorado plate that is like that.
I’d love to hear the answer to AWB’s other question about the Virginia PQR plates. Virginia switched dies in the late eighties-- for a while personalized plates used the new, narrower, serifed letters and standard plates used the old style, then around 1990 they started using the new dies for all plates and switched to a seven-character format. Non-specialty passenger plates were issued starting at ZZZ-9999 and going down. Now they are at around YL?-??? in the process. I know they used O and Z in 1989 because my Dad’s old-style 1989-issue plates started with OZP. But the PQR-??? plates are weird-- all the letters are in the old style except the R.
-malden
(who has 100 license plates in a crate in his closet)
Delaware is, to the best of my knowledge, the only state where you own the plate, not the state. There’s a healthy market for low-number plates. The main plate also has the distinction of being one of the ugliest things around.
Don’t know if this site has the anser to the OP (or any of the other queries in this thread, for that matter), but it is kind of fun and on the subject:
Just adding my two cents. I’ve lived my whole life in DE and this is my understanding:
Delaware uses up to six digits, including all numbers with less than six digits. (The governor always has No. 1, other government officials have other low numbers). Obviously six digit tags are the most common. Five digits tags can be come by somewhat easily. Both my sister and I bought our cars from a dealership where my cousin works and my cousin was able to request five digit tags for our cars.
The trouble comes in becuase of the fact that as long as you have a car to put it on, you can keep the same tag as long as you want. So if you get a number you like, you can just keep transferring it to your new car. If you don’t do this, the number is returned to the general population of numbers. So your not going to just get a “popular” number like one starting with a low number, or with a number repeated. Because you can keep the tag, “good” numbers are usually sold if the current owner doesn’t want to keep it.
As for the black and white tags, here is my understanding:
Black and white metal tags were the norm in the past. At some point DE changed to the blue and gold painted tags. Everyone who still had the old tags could keep them, but new ones were used from that point on. I actually owned a car with a black and white tag with the letters riveted onto the tag. I got it from my aunt when I bought her car and she bought it (the tag) from someone when she bought a different car, and now my brother owns the car with the tag. We are under pain of death not to let the number lapse (it is a five digit). It is supposedly worth $400, about eight times the value of the car it is on. You can see that we take these numbers pretty seriously. We also have a blue and gold tag with the same numbers that was issued when the tag change-over was made.
The ceramic tags used now are purchased by people with good numbers. I always thought that they were kind of a grey area legally and that you were supposed to put your blue and gold tag on before you had your car inspected.
Wow, more about DE license plates than you want to know:) And sadly this is my longest post to date.
-G
Yeah, now in Texas, the plates say “Truck.” Up here in Michigan, we don’t have much of a problem distinguishing cars from trucks. 
Delaware. Woo!
(I have nothing of value to contribute, sorry. But I have to post to Delaware threads.)
I used to work in a state highway department materials lab where we tested all of the materials that are used to make license plates, and until I read this thread I thought I knew a lot about license plates!
I’m a Delawarian and a car owner. If you own a 3 digit or less black porcelain plate, you better insure that thing because they are worth thousands. A while back, someone sold a car at auction with a 2 or 3 digit ceramic tag. The high bid was around $20,000. When the sale was over, the new owner took the tag and resold the car.
Yes our tags are primarily 6 digit. However, you forget the vanity tags. They can be anything you want it to be up to and including 6 letters, except profanity. Quite a few people pay the additional $20 to get them. We also have group tags. For example: VFW has tags which might read VFW 100 which aren’t in that 6 digit system. I’m not sure how many groups have the new tags, but I’ve seen quite a lot. I think you can get a group plate if you can show that your group will buy a certain number of them.
So just counting on a 6 digit plate to cover all vehicles in Delaware isn’t going to work. Perhaps some statistics groupie will calculate the permuations for 6 digit or 6 letter tags. That might make it closer to reality.
BTW, one of my favorite vanity tags belongs to a pilot from Dover AFB - it says : I AV8
So are there personalized plates in Deleware? No Markxx Plates?