Victorian license plate ‘Q’ sells for over $350,000

The market for traditional license plates has been red hot in recent years, but now Low-digit alphabetic license plates have started to command a lot of money.

Overnight, Victorian license plate ‘Q’ sold for a hammer price of $362,000 through Slattery Auctions, which is believed to be the highest paid for a single letter plate in Australia.

A total of 11 bids raised the price, with the winner paying just $390,000, including fees.

It is not known if the new owner will have to pay to have number plates issued from Queensland, where they currently reside.

The sale represents a 100 percent increase in value over three years, with the license plates selling for $181,000 through a Shannons auction held at the Motorclassica show in 2019, the first time such plates have been auctioned. since its launch nearly a decade earlier. .

Known as ‘exclusive number plates’ by VicRoads, ‘Q’ was one of 24 single-letter plates originally sold at auction in 2010, attracting a hammer price of $50,000, with the letters ‘I’ and ‘O ‘ retained due to their similarities to ‘1’ and ‘O’.

At the time, ‘A’ sold for more than double that amount, bringing in $110,000, and ‘X’ came in second with $100,000.

Despite the new record, low-digit alphabet plates still have some way of catching up with number plates.

In May 2022, the Victorian heritage number plate ’14’ broke records, selling for $2.27 million, well below NSW ‘4’ which was the most expensive Australian number plate publicly sold, grossing $2 .45 million in 2017.