Running license plate thread

Had a road trip to South Dakota and back last/this week, got to see lots of license plates. Wyoming is coming out with a new one in 2025, all cars must have it, state law requires a new plate every 8 years.

Steamboat is always standard and the plates are numbered by county so you can tell where someone is from. It's not bad, but I much prefer "The Equality State" along the bottom than some dumb website advertising.

Oregon has the ugliest standard plate in the country, a Charlie Brown Doug fir tree in the middle. I hate Pennsylvania's and California's since they dumped "Keystone State" and "The Golden State" for the friend in Pennsylvania nonsense and a California DMV website ad.

I know you can't be "heart of Dixie" anymore like Alabama was, but I liked the days when your state nickname or some catchy, state-relevant phrase was on the plate instead of some website address hying tourism.

 

All I know is in Tennessee you can get a Dolly Parton license plate.

 

Back in my bachelor days the living room artwork in my apartment was license plates. I had close to 100 of them from 40-plus states lining the walls. Always wanted to get all 50 in the collage somewhere, but there were a handful that were damn hard to find. They looked really cool up there. Lots of color, a reflective coating you don't realize is there until you see it at the right angle ... some of those were real works of art. It was definitely something people always seemed to be in awe of when they walked in the front door.
I traded for a few, got some from friends, bought some and scoured junkyards for others. I took a few road trips in that era where I made a point to get off the interstate and find a junkyard so I could scavenge a plate or two. Like all collecting, the search was a lot of the fun. It helped that they were pretty cheap. I don't think I ever paid more than about $15 for any of them, and most were $5 or less.

I think my favorite was also one of my first — a New Mexico plate I picked up for a few bucks at a tchotchke shop in Fort Sumner, where the grave of Billy the Kid is located (literally; the souvenir shop is in front, and you pay them for a ticket to see the grave out back). Always loved the striking bright yellow and red because it was so unique, and I always wanted one. It was a great souvenir of one of the best vacations I ever took.

 

Most standard plates have become pretty uniform among the states, so much that they all suck.

I like the Colorado plates with the mountains, and I was always partial to the blue and yellow California plates.

 

I think the Vermont plates are unchanged for 30 plus years and still look great.

Best license plate song?

 

Before we had kids, I was working on getting a plate from every state from the years my wife and I were born. Had to halt the collecting to pay for diapers and formula and stuff. Now that kids are almost out of the house, I need to take inventory and continue the hunt.

My daughter has gone through my collection and has a few plates on her bedroom wall, including one from the Northwest Territories, which is my all-time favorite plate.

 

People should have to explain their vanity plates. I cannot stand being behind a car with "DABER"and not knowing what it means.

 

I've had the Georgia Appalachian Trail plate for several years.

 

Yeah, it's getting harder to immediately identify the "Greenies" invading Wyoming every weekend!

 

The specialty plates seem like a hole states shouldn't go down.

 

Shoreline, a lighthouse, wetlands. Yes, CT's license plates are as boring as the state.