I moved to Oregon five years ago, having spent my entire life before that in California. Now there’s a chance I may be going back. I’m curious: when registering my vehicle (which I had before I left) and getting my California driver’s license, would I get the same numbers I used to have, or would I be issued new ones?
ETA: my old plates are long gone, if it makes a difference.
When I moved back to California after having lived there before, I was assigned the same driver’s license number that I originally had. I remember talking to the guy at the DMV about it because my last name had changed due to marriage, and he made a joke that I was being “sneaky”
and trying to evade the system, which uses the same license number that you were previously assigned. I believe that the registration number was different, but I never actually checked that (and I had a different car).
Your old plate number has probably been reassigned, and even if it wasn’t there would really be no reason to assign you the same one. You’ll almost certainly get a new, randomly-assigned plate.
Licenses and ID cards are different, because the numbers (in many states) aren’t mere serial numbers, but follow a formula. I have no experience with California specifically, but both Florida and Illinois use a similar formula that involves putting various sounds that your first and last name make, your birth date, etc. through a hashing algorithm, and spits out a particular number. Does California do this? Damned if I know.