Fancy your own combination of letters and numbers? These can be had from £325,000
Personalised numberplates are hugely popular in the UK, but they’re also very divisive things.
We look at one and are either prompted with feelings of admiration at the name or message on the plate, or we dismiss them as being a vanity project and waste of money.
Whatever the protruding thoughts may be, the price that some of these things go for are undeniably impressive. Without further ado then, join us as we boggle at the top most expensive numberplates ever sold in the UK.
For reference, we’ve even calculated what else you could buy with the money, in car terms.
The most expensive numberplates sold in the UK:
1 – 25 O – £518,480
The registration plate 25 O relates to the most expensive car ever sold at auction: the Ferrari 250 GTO. The plate’s £518,480 price tag may be dwarfed by the car’s £30,750,300 final bid, but it’s the most expensive plate sold in the UK yet. According to the DVLA, the plate now resides on an altogether more modern Ferrari – the LaFerrari hybrid hypercar.
The price of the plate could get you ten Audi TT RSs, but personalised plate vendor Regtransfers reckons it’s now increased in value, to £750,000 (fifteen TT RSs).
2 – X 1 – £502,500
Taking a close second place is the registration plate X 1. Little is known about the owner of the plate, but based on DVLA records it is currently in use on a Mercedes CLA purchased within the last three years. The plate fetched its half-million pound price in November 2012.
You could enjoy ten Mercedes-AMG CLA 45s for the amount originally paid for the X 1 numberplate, and estimates suggest it has almost doubled its value since being purchased in 2012 to £1,000,000. It’s unknown if the plate ever made its way onto a BMW X1 at any point.
3 – G 1 – £500,000
G 1 was the country’s most expensive reg plate for little over a year before X 1 came along, pipping it by a mere £2500. Nevertheless, G 1 sold in September 2011 for precisely half a million pounds; the equivalent of around 28 Ford Fiesta STs.
If the seller sold the plate today, they would – according to estimates – double their money, to £1 million. The DVLA database shows no record of the plate being in use at the time of writing.
4 – RR 1 – £472,000
A relatively new entry to this list, RR 1 was purchased in September 2018 for an amount that narrowly misses out on a podium position. Originally issued in 1925, the last time this plate changed hands was back in the 1960s, where its then-new owner paid £5000 for it.
Today the plate resides on a Rolls Royce Phantom, and seems like a worthwhile investment: according to regtransfers, it has gone up in value and is currently worth more than £500,000.
5 – F 1 – £440,625
Perhaps the most evocative reg plate amongst this list, the F 1 plate sold in January 2008 for £440,625. It’s currently registered to Afzal Kahn, of Kahn design fame, on a Bugatti Veyron. Before that, it was on a Volvo S80.
Kahn has expressed that if offered, he would sell the numberplate for over £10 million, but is not officially advertising the numberplate. The price Kahn payed for the plate in 2008 could buy you more than 15 examples of the BMW 3 Series.
6 – SH 1 – £415,143
Little is known about this exuberantly priced cominbation of letters and numbers, but its currently fitted to a Bentley Continental GT. It was sold in April 2019 at a DVLA auction, and can be yours should you decide not to opt for two Maserati MC20s.
7 – S 1 – £404,063
Arguably one of the most historic Scottish number plates ever printed, S 1 was issued in 1903 as the country’s first registration plate. Lord Kingsburgh, one of the first people in Scotland to buy a car, became its owner, and it remained in the family for generations before finally changing hands.
It was bought by an anonymous bidder in 2008, who said it would be used on an old Skoda, although the DVLA doesn’t show it as currently registered to any car. Either way, it was a shrewd investment – the plate is currently valued at more than £1,000,000.
8 – 1 D – £352,411
Next on the list is 1 D: first purchased in June 2009 for £352,411; in other words, roughly the same price as a Rolls-Royce Phantom Coupé. It’s currently registered to a Bentley Bentayga; a car with a starting price of less than half that of the plate today.
The plate was originally sold at a DVLA auction, but experts put its value today at £500,000.
9 – 1 S – £340,000
1 S was first bought in March 2010, and for a time resided on a car of a similar value to its £340,000 original price tag: a Rolls-Royce Phantom. The estimated worth of the plate has almost doubled in value since, although according to the DVLA it isn’t currently registered on any vehicle.
It costs the same as the Lexus LFA when it was new, or 25 examples of the Citroen C3 You.
11 – M 1 – £331,500
M 1 is another which found itself on a Bentley; this time on a Flying Spur. The plate was bought in June 2006, making it one of the earliest entries on our list. It’s for this reason that its value has increased so much; it’s now valued at a cool £1million.
Its original £331,500 price could buy three Porsche 911 Carrera T coupés.
12 – GB 1- £325,000
This is one which has almost certainly risen in value post-Brexit, and it’s on a rather fitting car: the Rolls-Royce Phantom. The patriotic numberplate was sold to a private buyer in November 2009 for £325,000, although it’s now worth £500,000.
For that, you could buy a Lamborghini Revuelto, and still have over £50,000 left.
So, in summary, the top ten most expensive numberplates ever sold in the UK are:
1 – 25 O – £518,480
2 – X 1 – £502,500
3 – G 1 – £500,000
4 – RR 1 – £472,000
5 – F 1 – £440,625
6 – SH 1 – £415,143
7 – S 1 – £404,063
8 – 1 D – £352,411
9 – 1 S – £340,000
10 – M 1 – £331,500
11 – GB 1- £325,000
Let us know your thoughts below. Which camp are you in? Do you think personalised numberplates are harmless fun or a symbol of frivolous excess?
Disclaimer: While our images are a close representation of the models which feature these numberplates, they are not the owners’ cars.
