| Harv wrote: |
A friend and I were talking and the subject of a car having a California black plate came up. We have all seen the adds satiating "California black plate car".
So what does that really mean? Does that mean it's been in California it's whole life?
John |
history scenario some time ago, but can't find the thread in search, so here goes (again) - LONG:
For many years (going waaaay back to pre WWII, and ending in the late 60's) CA flip-flopped between black plates with yellow characters and yellow plates with black characters. Each plate series always started at AAA 000, and continued to be issued until the letter/number series ran out (theoretically at ZZZ 999).
Once a series was exhausted, the colors were reversed, and every car in the state got a new set of plates with the start of the new color sequence (I remember getting the job of switching the plates over on my parent's 58 Plymouth wagon and 55 Rambler sedan at age 12 when black plates replaced yellow ones at the start of 1963). The first year of a new series had the issue year stamped on the plate - from the 2nd year onward, a colored sticker was added for the new registration year.
As a result, every car registered in CA at the start of 1963 got a fresh set of the now well known "Black Plates", as did every new car registered in the state from the first of the year onward. New plates were available both at DMV counters and AAA offices - supposedly, plates were delivered to issuing offices in batches of 1000 plates (i.e. AAA 000 through AAA 999), and were issued sequentially.
Given the number of existing vehicles in CA in 1963, it's a reasonable guess that plate sequences up through the "F", "G" or "H" series were all issued in the first year - I owned a 1964 Corvair that was sold new in Sacramento and had MEW series plates on it, so by the third year that the last series of black plates were out, the series was already more than 2/3 gone.
The issuing policy changed in the late 60's, due to the rate at which the plate series were being used up - it had taken almost 10 years to go through the previous yellow plate series (first issued in 1954 or 55), but by 1967 the black plate series was already running short after only 5 years. As a result, the DMV decided NOT to retire the black plate series, but to start issuing a completely different plate series as the black plates ran out - the new series was blue with yellow letters, and the character sequence was reversed, with digits first (i.e. 000 AAA).
This last detail is the crux of the value of CA "Black Plates" - since California has always assigned plates to a specific vehicle for the life of the vehicle or plate series (this policy is still in force for everything EXCEPT vanity type plates), it's reasonably certain that a 60's or earlier car that still has black plates had that set of plates issued to it under one of two circumstances - either when it was sold new in CA, or when it can into the state and was first registered here.
It's not a exact process, but it's possible to get a reasonable "guesstimate" of when the plates were issued by the plate sequence, given that the first half of the series was mostly issued during 1963, and the very last plates were issued between late 68 and mid 69. By way of example, my late 68 production 69 '02 was delivered at the factory in Feb of 69, then shipped to Napa CA where it's ZOS 311 plates were issued in mid spring of 69 when the car arrived here...... Part of what makes it somewhat difficult to pin down issuing dates is that large, busy DMV offices went through plate series pretty fast, while small offices in rural locations might take a year or more to issue a full plate series.
Much of the above also applies to the blue plate series as well, as they were also assigned sequentially, so cars sold new in CA in late '69 should have plates that are low in the alphabetical sequence, getting farther up into the alphabet as the years progress. There's one other factor that comes into play at the end of the 6 character blue plate series - rather than change plate colors, the CA DMV added a seventh character to the plates and reshuffled the sequence, so the seven character plates start with 0 AAA 000.
Sometime after that point the whole plate process went nutso - we now have two styles of white plates, about a dozen various specialty plates (at extra cost, of course), and the option to make up "vanity" plates on any and all plate styles.
_________________
Barry Allen
'69 Sunroof
'82 E21 (daily driver)
'82 633CSi (wife's driver)
'79 Datsun King Cab (yard & parts hauler)
'65 El Camino - for sale - anybody want a hot rod?
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