Whilst the title of this post might seem to have an obvious answer, the post's conclusion may come as a surprise. In fact, the conclusion is such a bombshell that we're not going to delay it until the end. It's important enough to go at the beginning, so without any further ado, here it is...
Under certain circumstances, a private number plate company can sell almost identical personalised number plates for much, MUCH lower prices than the DVLA.
If you didn't think that were possible, we can see why. As the Licensing Agency for UK number plates, the DVLA can be considered to control the market. The Government agency creates all registrations, and therefore it is always the source of a brand new plate. That means if anyone wants to act as a distributor for the DVLA (which is the role that private plate companies perform), they must mark up the DVLA's original price in order to avoid losing money.
So we appear to be at a dead end. It appears that by the laws of business, the DVLA must always be the cheapest. But appearances can be deceptive...
THE MAGIC FACTOR
The factor that prevents the DVLA from winning every price battle in practice, is a core effect of the private plate market, which is almost synonymous with time-travel. When a dealer sells a private plate - particularly an old private plate - they're handling a commodity whose brand new price ticket dates back to an earlier time, when prices were considerably lower. That gives a company like NetPlates - a private plate dealer which has always sought to offer the best deals - the scope to undercut the UK's official Vehicle Licensing Agency.
Before we go any further, let's look at an example, which applies at the time of writing only:
- A25 KEN (DVLA) - £1,599
- M26 KEN (NetPlates) - £900
This is just a quick comparison, sampled across the DVLA website and the NetPlates website, for six-digit prefix plates, personalising the name KEN. And it's clear that in this particular case there's a huge percentage difference in the base prices.
In another case we can see NetPlates offering a similar prefix personalisation - this time for a "BMW"-themed plate - at half the base price of the DVLA's listing:
- A26 BMW (DVLA) - £1,599
- W59 BMW (NetPlates) - £800
In fact, integrated into the NetPlates buy there's a Walsall postcode, which bumps up the personalisation value.
So how does this happen?
Clue number one is that, despite the way things appear, the DVLA registrations are new. That is, even though they represent the 1983-1984 period, they're being assigned to motor vehicles for the first time. The NetPlates registrations are not new.
BACKGROUND
The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (better known as the DVLA) came into being in 1965. Back then, the world of number plates was very different. Suffix-format registrations had just gone into circulation, and both prefix and new-style plates were a long way in the future. Further, the DVLA didn't consider number plates to be anything more than a means to register a vehicle. If fact, even through the 1970s, the DVLA gave away many now desirable personal registrations for free, on a luck-of-the-draw basis.
But after the prefix-format registrations hit the scene with then new "A" series in 1983, the Licensing Agency slowly began to recognise that it could hold back some of the desirables, and sell them, rather than randomly dropping them onto vehicles as standard. Initially, the DVLA only did this on a very limited basis. Realising that an A1, an A2, or an A3 plate had a value to people in the market for personalised registrations, the DVLA held back these releases, and attached a price to them. In fact, they also held back every registration between A4 and A20 too.
So, for example, if your name was MAZ, you would have to buy A8 MAZ from the DVLA. If your name was SAM, you'd have to buy A14 SAM. This policy of holding back low numbers continued through the prefix series as far as the H prefix - issued between August 1990 and July 1991. But with interest in personalisation heating up, forward from the J prefix, the DVLA held back the following:
- J1 to J20
- J100, J200, J300, J400, J500, J600, J700, J800, J900
- J111, J222, J333, J444, J555, J666, J777, J888, J999
Of course, for each individual prefix above there would be a large number of plates, because there were many permutations of subsequent letters in the registrations.
From the K prefix, further desirables were added to the DVLA's growing list of paid offerings. K21 to K30 joined the list, significantly expanding the range of monetised registrations.
From S, there were more additions, including S123, S321 and S121. And importantly, the DVLA also began to retrospectively add some of its more recent protocols to older registrations. For example, A26 ultimately became monetisable and so would have to be bought. The Agency had already given away some of the A26s for free. But unreleased A26 prefixes would net the DVLA in the region of £1,600 a pop.
And that's where we loop back to our website samples. You can see in the second of our two comparisons that an unreleased A26 is on sale right now.
IN SUMMARY
Over the years, the DVLA's steady realisation that personalised number plates were becoming more and more valuable, steadily pushed up the prices that the Agency set. And it's this inflationary effect which has given the private market the power - if it so chooses - to undercut the DVLA on very similar private plates.
So now that you've found a private plate company that relishes the challenge of undercutting DVLA prices, you might perhaps like to try a couple of searches for a plate that would suit you?
