First DVLA Auction of 2012
Another year, and another DVLA auction. The venue for the first auction of 2012 was the Stratford Manor Hotel in Warwickshire. Although the venue is a central location, it was very poorly attended yet again by members of the public. In fairness though, this was probably due to the fact that a large percentage of bidders now use the Internet facilities provided by SMA, The Scottish Motor Auction team responsible for running the sale.
Using these online facilities enables buyer to bid at the sale at the click of a button. Its not as good as being there although it does save a lot of money on travelling expenses and accommodation if you are considering bidding on each of the 3 days of the sale. The other methods of bidding are, of course, attending the sale, leaving a postal bid or using a company in the industry to arrange a call back so that you can bid live over the phone.
All the registrations were auctioned off in alphabetical order so there were quiet periods in the sale where the less popular combinations of letters sold for lower amounts and therefore kept the sale moving quickly.
As the more popular two and two registrations, as they are called, are starting to dry up due to the frequency of the auction sales, some of the more popular combinations are now appearing with three digit number such as 700 RB and 400 CL for example. These private number plates appear more attractive than the nondescript two digit ones. There appeared to be more and more names at this auction sale such as ART 111R to resemble ARTHUR, CH11 PPY for a carpenter perhaps, and EAM 8N which looked a lot like EAMON and they are starting to make significant hammer prices. In fact the most expensive private number plate sold at the sale was a name. The registration plate DH11 LON was sold for sixty one thousand pounds on the hammer. With the addition of the buyer’s premium of eight percent and the VAT, which needed to be added, the total price of this registration amounted to over seventy nine thousand pounds.
Other high value plates that were sold were 55 O, which we assume was bought by a Ferrari owner for his Ferrari 550, that made almost forty seven thousand pounds once the additional fees had been added to the hammer price.
