Cherished Number Plates News

Number plates in Asia gain popularity

10 December 2008

Personalised number plates are becoming increasingly more common in Asia and indeed through the world. Recently the very unusual car registration number ‘1234’ was sold to one lucky bidder for more than £28000. Asian personalized number plates are becoming the latest craze to hit the continent. However they normally go for quite high sums with the supply and demand factor coming into play. Asian number plates do differ from the conventional ones we have in the UK as they are made up of numbers and do not contain letters for most of the countries.

Recently a government auction took place in Hong Kong which raised over £200,000 having sold hundreds of personalised number plates. Further auctions are expected to take place over the coming months with at least one expected to be before Christmas. Auctions such as this normally take place twice a month with one special auction taking centre stage every year.

Hong Kong has been one of the most effected areas by the recent economic depression to hit the worlds markets, however number plates are still selling strongly as the recent auction highlighted. Although around 30 of the number plates did not quite reach the expected reserve prices. Clearly the auction was still a success with the amount raised from the number plates.

Number plate auctions first began in Hong Kong in the early 1970’s and have remained popular ever since although the first personalised number plate auction did not take place until 2006. It is clear that number plate auction will continue to thrive in the region and will be a good source of revenue for the Chinese government. Asian entrepreneurs and ‘bolly-wood’ stars have grown fond of personalized number plates and they are normally the main bidders in the up market auctions, although some sports fans have been known to shell out thousands for the memorabilia.