more news from California DMV about early plate issuance

[EARLY911ZOO]

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/...age-car-plates

[Bob Harriman]

I thought 69's had black plates.

[EARLY911ZOO]

depends on the month.. I have some new never issued 69 blue plates with a 69 sticker affixed to them

[boxster03]

I thought 69's had black plates

Bob - I guess the way it works is Sacramento sends out plates to all the DMV offices and if the office happens to be in a small market where they don't get a lot of new registrations then the plates can sit on the shelf so to speak and you might find an older sequence plate put on a later MY or later month in the year of issue than a DMV office that gets a lot of traffic/registration activity

Theoretically they could issue a 70 blue plate on a 69MY in a heavy traffic DMV ofc. and a 69 black plate on a 70MY or later in slow traffic DMV ofc.

[gsjohnson]

The Black to Blue plate transition occurred in November of 1969. Since California issued License Plates sequentially, you can determine the plate's issue date by the plate letter/number combo.

[69Sman]

Bob - I guess the way it works is Sacramento sends out plates to all the DMV offices and if the office happens to be in a small market where they don't get a lot of new registrations then the plates can sit on the shelf so to speak and you might find an older sequence plate put on a later MY or later month in the year of issue than a DMV office that gets a lot of traffic/registration activity

Theoretically they could issue a 70 blue plate on a 69MY in a heavy traffic DMV ofc. and a 69 black plate on a 70MY or later in slow traffic DMV ofc.

Correct. At the time, Sacramento used to send the plates out in 'batches' to each county, which then distributed them to local offices of the DMV. IN a busy county, you could get a plate beginning with the letter 'X' months if not a year before the same letter would be used on a smaller county office.

[gsjohnson]

I don't know about a year, but they were batched for each DMV office. You would think that each office had control over their inventories.

http://www.vintagesportscars.com/cal...kplatecar.html

[CidTito]

As of this time...

Yellow Plates are 1213 with 6,287 to go
Black Plates are 4224 with just 3276 to go
Blue Plates are 901 with 6599 to go

Presumably, with just about everyone owning these kinds of cars, and likely aware of this program, do you guys think that there are there many more than 22,500 cars out there to fill this specific program?

I have my order in, tell your friends!!!

[Kris Clewell]

whats with the black plate deal obsession thing? Naivety in full force over here...

[rockandrollrods]

Because they look cooler than the stupid white ones we have now. I grew up with blue plates on everything, but my nostalgia isn't quite as strong for them as the black ones.