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This page illustrates some of the license plate-related projects I'm either currently working on, or am planning to start some time in the future. In most cases I don't yet have web pages for these plate categories. These various projects are ordered roughly according to priority or likelihood of ever happening. Latest noteworthy updates to this page
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On this page
Moved to their own web pages |
It seems that no matter how much I try, I never manage to get completely caught up in making updates to the various pages on this site. Sometimes I'm pretty close, and other times I have quite a backlog of updates that need to be made. Anyway, at any given point in time, I almost certainly have a number of new plates in my collection, new candid photos I've taken of plates in current use, and additional plate photos contributed by others, that haven't yet made it onto the appropriate web pages.
(I've decided to stop showing "plates that I've recently photographed and/or edited in preparation for being included on one of my web pages" in this section. Almost always, I was just posting pics of plates that I had already recently added to the site, and sometimes months would go by before I'd change the pics here. Instead, I now have a page called Recent Site Updates where I show a few of the very newest plate photos I've added. I've done a much better job at keeping that page current.)
I'm working on acquiring one of every year of Illinois passenger car plates, and I already show them on my Illinois passenger car plate gallery page. I've also begun to document the history of these plates, like I already have for several other states. Right now I have a page for Illinois passenger car plate history 1979-present; I'll be working on creating additional page(s) for years prior to 1979.
I've recently acquired a number of Illinois sample plates, enough to make it worthwhile to create a new page to show and describe them. Illinois samples tend to be a bit out of the ordinary as compared to those from other states, which I find to be interesting.
U.S. Forces in Germany plate designs used from 1973-1983, 1983-1998, and 1989-2002.
U.S. Forces in Germany plates were issued to members of the U.S. military for use on their personal vehicles while stationed in (West) Germany between 1946 and 2005. Today, they're not used while in Germany, but are issued as temporary plates for the personal vehicles of service members returning from Germany, to give them time to get their vehicles registered in a U.S. state.
It's not that I have any burning desire to collect these plates. I didn't serve in the military and I've never been to Germany. However, these plates are pretty easy to find in the U.S., as many service members brought them home and/or kept them as souvenirs, and from 1962 and the present, they've only had "USA" as the jursidiction name, with nothing to indicate their use or purpose. People who aren't plate collectors or who are newbie plate collectors are therefore are usually baffled by these plates when they come across them. I've concluded that the easiest way to reduce the repetitive questions I get about these plates is to create a page that shows and explains them.
Toy license plates are miniature replicas of real license plates, intended for children to collect or attach to their bicycle. Cereal premium plates are toy license plates that were found in boxes of Wheaties cereal in 1953 and 1954, Honeycomb and various other brands of Post cereal off and on between 1968 and the early 1990s, and various other consumer products. In some cases these plates were available by sending in box tops rather than actually in the product itself. Toy plates that are not cereal premium plates usually have the child's name on them, and were/are sold in toy stores and souvenir shops.
I'm not going to try to collect every cereal premium plate and toy plate ever made, but I have acquired and will continue to add to a nice representative group of these plates. So, it's getting to the point where I can justify creating a web page to show them off and explain them.
(1952 plate is from the collection of Pete Madsen; 1978 base plate was previously in my trade box.)
Originally, I was thinking the next North Carolina plate page I'd do would be one that covered the history of trailer plates. My motivation for doing so was to help people determine which North Carolina plates went on trailers, since so many of them aren't readily apparent. I already have history pages for North Carolina passenger car plates from 1942-1974 and 1975-present, and for truck plates from 1942-present.
However, I don't actually collect North Carolina plates, I have no burning desire to specifically study the history of trailer plates, and I know there are still other North Carolina plate types that would need to have their own history pages in order to thoroughly address all the "mystery plate" types. I realized that a better solution to accomplish the same objective would be to just create a "plate type identification" page, similar to what I've already done for Maryland and Pennsylvania plates whose usage isn't obvious.
As a proud graduate of the University of Maryland, I've acquired a few plates related to my alma mater. There aren't many varieties of these, and they're not easy to find, but that's not stopping me. I also have a few plates that were used on university-owned vehicles, and I'd be happy to acquire any personalized plate promoting the Terps that I may come across.
Don't hate me because I have a booster plate on a license plate web site! I acquired the front booster plate promoting a church shown above, and decided that I should start collecting these in addition to actual license plates. So, I'm now looking for additional front booster plates promoting specific Christian denominations, churches, schools, and organizations. (I'm not looking for generic Christian novelty plates that you could buy at a Christian bookstore.)
I've created pages to show my nearly complete set of U.S. 1977 passenger car plates and my work-in-progress set of U.S. 1977 non-passenger plates, but I figure someday I'll also have a third page for U.S. 1977 motorcycle plates. I'm not actively looking for these, but I've somehow managed to acquire a few of them so far. Pennsylvania used an undated, unstickered motorcycle plate in 1977.
I've pretty much resisted collecting anything but U.S. plates thus far, but the idea of completing a Canadian 1977 passenger car set to compliment my U.S. 1977 passenger car set is growing on me. I remember regularly seeing Quebec and Ontario plates on U.S. streets and highways back then. It shouldn't be that hard to finish, as I only need twelve plates, one each for the ten provinces and two territories.
My daughter-in-law is a dentist, and with her encoragement, I've acquired a bunch of plates related to dentistry and oral health. I intend to make a display of these for her waiting room or office. I'll also make a web page featuring these same plates so that everyone can enjoy them. I'm not sure which will happen first. I have a good number of these plates, so both are going to be fairly labor-intesive projects.
As time permits, I continue researching and documenting the history of additional Pennsylvania plate types, and create new web pages to present my photos and research. I've steadily assembled a photo library of various types of Pennsylvania non-passenger plates, including photos of plates I've acquired for my own collection, photos of plates in others' collections, and plates in actual use. At this point, there are only a few stray categories of plates I have yet to cover. These are going to be a low priority.
1990 Maryland fleet trailer sticker;
1992 Maryland alternate color sticker used on Treasure the Chesapeake specialty plates;
2009 Maryland "smart sticker" pilot program sticker;
Maryland fleet trailer month sticker;
Maryland historic vehicle permanent registration sticker.
I have an existing page called "General Information about Maryland license plates" that included information about vehicle class codes, plate expiration stickers, sample plates and error plates and other oddities. I'd badly neglected this page for many years. My intention was to split this page out into several separate pages, and to add new info and photos as I created each new page. The first two of these, the sample and prototype plate page, and the license plate errors and oddities page, have been finished for some time now.
I do still intend to create a page devoted solely to Maryland year and month plate stickers. I've been putting this off for years now, mainly because I need to take close-up photos of the stickers on many Maryland plates in my collection, and I find photo-editing plate stickers to be particularly tedious.
If I ever start up an online license plate store, I've always wanted to use the name "Plate Daddy" for it. In 2008, I claimed for myself the most obvious and intuitive web address to go with that store name. It's been sitting there unused all these years waiting for me to do something with it.
Not too long ago, I become motivated to actually create that online license plate store, but I concluded that it would require an investment of time that I just don't have available right now. Someday, I'll have the time and will work to make this a reality. That might not until I'm retired, which isn't going to happen anytime soon. But, hopefully one day, you'll be able to go visit www.platedaddy.com and see something more than a placeholder page. When that happens, I'll move my plate inventory there and remove my trade/sale pages from this site.
The 1978-79 plate was for a state government vehicle; the 1980 plate was for a light trailer; the 2000 plate was
issued to a "recreational" trailer with living accommodations.
I'm not really looking for them, but as I happen to acquire various Illinois non-passenger, special interest, and special event plates, I'm hanging on to them rather than putting them into my trade box. At some point in the future, I may start actively collecting these.
The colorful and patriotic Michigan 1976 base plate, which was generally used through 1978, has always intrigued me. I'm thinking that someday I might want to try to collect each Michigan plate type issued on this base. So far, I just have the passenger car plate, at left, and one of several versions of non-profit organization vehicle plates, at right. Non-profit plates and government vehicle plates on this base were used through the mid-1980s.
I've collected God-themed special interest plates and church-related plate types for some time now. So far I've mostly resisted collecting vanity plates with Christian messages or biblical references, as I'm generally bored by vanity plates. I had this one God vanity that someone gave me, but I must admit I did buy this John 3:16 vanity that I came across. Someday, I may become more intentional about seeking these out.
Pennsylvania limited edition plate commemorating the ratification of the U.S. Constitution (plate in actual use);
1991 Illinois special event plate commemorating the ratification of the Bill of Rights.
I've long toyed with the idea of collecting plates related to the U.S. Constitution. There are actually only a few kinds of these, but two of them are rather scarce and pricey. I didn't know this Illinois special event plate even existed until I saw it on someone's sale table at a plate meet; now it's mine.
Someday, but not anytime soon, I might start collecting plates from the District of Columbia. I lived in various Maryland suburbs in the greater Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, and saw D.C. plates on the road regularly, for over 20 years.
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