While driving home from work last night, I ended up stuck in traffic (as I so often seem to) behind a large 4×4. As my commute routinely involves 40 mins in slow moving traffic, I habitually spend a large portion of my time staring at the back end of various cars. This one was unremarkable, save for the fact that it was sporting a personalised number plate, reading 17A. As I continued my walking-speed journey home, I found myself thinking the two thoughts I always think when encountering a personalised number plate –

1) What is the significance of the numbers and letters?

2) How much did it cost?

Of course, the first question sometimes answers itself. “Boss 1” or “J4MES” are pretty self explanatory, but sometimes it’s not so clear. In this case, what was the significance of 17A..? Presumably the number has some special meaning to the owner; in particular (as I intuitively thought) as it must have been expensive.

Which brings us to question two – price. I’m aware that private registration plates can be hugely expensive. In fact, I’ve flirted with the idea of getting some myself, despite the dark looks and mutterings of “mid-life crisis” from my wife. They are unique and individual, and would add that extra special touch while adorning my Merc. However, then price can indeed be prohibitively expensive. Plate prices can range all the way from around a grand, to being more expensive than your average super car. Indeed, the most expensive licence plate ever sold simply read “1” and was purchased at a charity auction in the UAE in 2008 for the eye-watering price of £3.5 million. So possibly not the cheapest car accessory you could come by…

Of course, there was no way of knowing the cost of that 17A private number plate, or what it stood for – but I wondered all the way home.