I was looking at black-and-yellow CA license plates on eBay, and there’s a guy selling them with years on them. e.g., 1965 is the plate number. I asked him if he made the plates himself, and whether he could provice a plate with ‘anything’ on it. He replied that making replicas of license plates (except for a year, apparently) is illegal.
Obviously one could not put a replica tag on a car and drive around with it. One cannot obtain a replica plate (even if it is an exact copy of an original) and register his car with it. But is it actually illegal to have a replica tag made as long as you don’t put it on the car and use the car on a public road?
The thing I’ve picked up on SDMB is that “crime” is closely tied to “intent.” So just as a WAG, if you don’t intend to pass the replica off as a real plate it appears not to be a problem. And that seems to be confirmed by the other posts.
Nope. Over the door to the den is a replica Nevada plate that reads WEDNVEGAS. They gave it to us as part of our wedding package. Looks exactly like the real thing.
What color are the letters? When I was living in Nevada, you could buy from the DMV itself plates that had anything you liked on them, stamped and all. The letters were colored red, though, not dark blue and – needless to say – they were no substitute for the real thing so far as driving around was concerned.
On preview, “WEDNVEGAS” is too long. The limit on the DMV plates was eight, IIRC.