I am Gideon Nicksic, ALPCA 12423, and welcome to my website, where I spend way too much time and mobile data researching Wisconsin license plates. I've extensively researched Wisconsin license plates on many different sites... though some of the most useful have been eBay, WorthPoint, and other collector websites.
Here are some important things to note on my website:
NOTE January 25, 2021: I will be moving my website very soon. The old websites will be viewable until this summer when my Google account is deleted. There won't be any new images added to this site and edits to serial ranges will soon stop. Until my new website is launched, you can view (and submit new serial ranges) on my notes on Google Spreadsheets.
First of all, this website is a work in progress, and it always will be a work in progress. It takes me a long time to code my website, write my articles, compile my research, take/download photos, then edit those photos and upload them to my website, and live a life at the same time. This website is like an online game, this website will work for people's research but there will be (somewhat) regular improvements and updates.
1. This website was designed on a Chromebook, and it is structured to display at a landscape view. If you happen to be using a mobile device (which unfortunately is likely), please change it to landscape view, as if you use portrait the tables will go off the screen.
2. This website is meant for informational purposes, and to provide what information I have. I don't know everything, and just because something is on this website doesn't mean it's accurate. I might be following false information, I might have written a license plate number down wrong, I might have made a typo here and there, etc.
3. You can use my photos on this website that don't have a credit, or are credited with my initials, as long as you credit me in some way. You can say the photo was from me, you can hyperlink to my website, or you can do both if you are feeling generous. However, I would recommend asking me which photos you want to use because I'm not perfect and I might have forgotten to cite a photo. Generally I cite my photos, but once or twice I forget the credit.
4. None of the license plate information on this website is copyrighted. License plate numbers and information are public domain information, and even if I wanted to copyright them for myself, I can't. You don't have to credit me for copying information from here, though a credit would be a great way to say thanks.
5. Multiple license plate collectors say that license plates and their numbers are not sensitive information. One said that they had talked to many cops on this, and they are the webmaster of the ALPCA websites, and another reputable collector even posted his own license plate to prove that they aren't sensitive. See more on this stuff here, since I'm not the expert here. If your license plate information is on this website somewhere and you ABSOLUTELY don't want it here, email me here, though I can't promise I will respond during the summer or after May 2021, as it is my school email and I don't use it when I'm not in school.
6. The purpose of this website isn't meant to steal information from other websites, rather it is meant to satisfy the curiosity of fellow collectors and serve as a very extensive resource for Wisconsin license plates. I have made plenty of effort to indicate where I get my information from, though I don't always remember. Sometime soon I will start individually citing pieces of information, but right now I'm starting by just putting something up.
7. If your image is on this website without permission (whether it somehow ended up here without me noticing or someone else pirated your image, then released it under CC licenses), email me at the above link and I'll take it down immediately.
Also, go visit Andrew Turnbull's Wisconsin license plate pages. They have been a very useful resource for me, and that website was a heavy inspiration on my own site.
Down below is a bunch of blog-like articles I write about updates to this website and the processes of updating this website, rants about crappy license plate design, rare license plates, and my license plate adventures that only come once every few months. If you like them, email me, and I'll have more motivation to write them.
I am planning on moving my website very soon, within the next month. I can't stand my coding platform anymore. It's been a nightmare to manage pictures and I haven't added a single image since before I went to the license plate meet. And the entire redesign of the website was the final straw. I hated the platform as it was, but after the redesign with the irritating automatic addition of closing paranthesis, quotation marks, and curly brackets for CSS, the platform became untolerable.
For a long time I've used Code.org's studio to code and host my website. I was fine with the platform for a little while, but as my website grew the load time became unbearable to the point that I would pin my website tab to make sure that the tab didn't close. Every time my teachers would focus browse me (which means that they close my tabs out because they don't trust me to work even though I am a high schooler) I would freak out because it took so long to load my website. I started pruning images off my website recently (which is why some images are broken) and it still isn't enough. And after the redesign I keep getting a notification that the maximum amount of files has been reached. I purged a bunch of images off my website and it still isn't enough.
Another irritating thing is that the platform doesn't support folders, so I have to scroll through a huge list of images before I can edit a single webpage.
Before the redesign of the coding platform I had to use the same platform to code in JavaScript. When I used that platform I was irritated at the constant automatic addition of closing parenthesis and quotation marks. Why? Why can't I say that I don't want to have automatic closing tags? Why can't I customize my experience with this platform? There is no customization whatsoever. I know this site is meant for schools. But with the option of making your own outside of class projects (which is what I do with this current website), why would you force annoying settings upon me? One thing I hated with the automatic closing tags is that there would always be an extra tag because they decided to add the tag for me because I can't add a quotation mark for some reason. My entire code goes pink if I miss a quotation mark, do you really think I would forget a quotation mark?
I'm planning on moving my website to a new domain, which I will likely register my domain as wisconsinlicenseplates.net. (at the moment the link doesn't work because the domain isn't registered right now.) If you are wondering why I chose .net instead of .com, let me explain:
I will still update serial ranges, but I will stop updating the serial ranges soon as I move my website.
I bought another license plate from eBay a couple days ago. It was a March 2008 tractor plate, MS 2114, and it was $15. I was only able to buy the plate because my parents had leftover money from eBay shopping for license plates for me, and they gave me the $9 that was left over. I used the other $7 out of my money, which was a good price for a tractor plate like that.
I also bought some license plate tabs from a license plate collector. I bought a pair of what I think is 1948 insert truck tabs, and I also picked up a 1952 farm tab for $3 more. It was a non-passenger tab for a run of plates I was building so I couldn't say no to the tab for just $3.
I was looking up license plate numbers last year, and I wondered just how heavy trailer plates can be. I knew of an L weight class trailer plate I had found in June 2018, but there was no evidence of trailer plates beyond the L weight class. While searching I went and searched plates all the way to the T weight class, and some plates had the same number used for different plate types. Of the plate types listed trailer was one of the plates listed.
Even though I had basically confirmed the existence of T weight class trailer plates, I never thought I would ever see a T weight class trailer plate, nor did I think I would ever hear about a single plate being found.
Yesterday, the day I started writing this aricle, I found an image of a T weight class trailer plate posted on a license plate collector group for Wisconsin license plates. It was numbered TR 310, and I was absolutely shocked at the find. First of all, I don't know how a person defines whether to register a trailer as a semi trailer or a trailer, so I already don't know what a trailer like that would look like.
Also, in other news, a 2024 sticker has been found in April, and it took me until now to find out that the sticker color has been known. And I was correct in the sense that 2024 stickers are black on white. I correctly guessed 2016 (I guessed red on white), 2021, 2022 (kind of, I guessed yellow but the sticker was tan), and 2024 sticker colors. I guessed 2016 stickers based on a 7 year cycle that I was seeing with sticker colors, I guessed 2021 stickers with a pattern of boat stickers being close to passenger stickers for 2018, 2019, and 2020, I guessed 2022 stickers based on a wrong sticker color saying that 2021 stickers were black on white, and I saw a pattern in insert stickers with all stickers alternating between yellow and white a lot. I guessed 2024 stickers by process of elimination because white had not been used in such a long time.
However, that doesn't mean I'm good at guessing sticker colors. I guessed the 2015 and 2020 sticker color to be black on green, then pushed my black on green prediction to 2017. I guessed 2019 stickers to be black on red.
I have no clue what stickers beyond 2024 will be. I have to wait until 2023 to find any new sticker colors beyond insert stickers.
I got a lot of license plates for Christmas. Some of the most notable plates include a March 2017 apportioned plate, 1957 heavy farm, 1981 ZA trailer, September 1993 insert truck with a restricted use sticker, 1992 insert truck in the PA series, and a lot of 4 insert truck tabs, supposedly from 1951-1961.
My sister bought me a New Mexico chili pepper capital license plate, which is ironic because I ended up buying her the exact same license plate product on eBay a few days after she bought the plate for me.
I am so far behind on license plate stuff. I tried to crop over 1,000 images, and I realized I had to start over. Not fun.
I also bought a bunch of license plates from a license plate collector that my dad happened to know. In the lot was a 1934 truck plate, 2005 special-Z plate, and some insert truck plates from 1969, 1973, and 1977, which are in my insert truck section of the website, with the credit saying "Chris".
I'm also taking the time to archive links to old eBay images before they get deleted. Something I hate doing. I also archiving the pages of the search results in case the images are eventually deleted (though the images have lasted at least a week longer than the pages themselves.) If you want to see some old license plates you might not have found on Worthpoint, then click on the Plate Links section of this website.
A few years ago, I wanted to go to a junkyard. I thought I would be able to get some license plates, and unfortunately I found out I would have to be 18 to go to junkyards.
I turned 18 3 weeks ago. And the weekend of my birthday, I went to the C. L. Chase junkyard in Camp Douglas.
When I went to the junkyard, we were lost. We didn't know where the junkyard was. So we had to call the place to come show us where to go.
I sat. And sat. AND SAT. For half an hour, I did nothing while my sister and mom were at Walmart getting toys during black Friday month (stupidest idea ever. It's a stupid idea to have black Friday when people are trying to grocery shop. If they really cared to stop COVID-19 they would do cyber Monday online only).
Once the owner of the junkyard finally came, they brought me to the beginning of the junkyard, which had some plates ranging from 1977 to 2001. I went looking for many license plates, and then was told to leave because the owner had business.
Really? You are going to waste a half hour of my time when we were in the dang town and then kick me out half an hour later before I even purchased a single license plate? You are going to charge me $6 per license plate then ask me to leave before I can waste my money on a crappy license plate?
There are a lot of license plates there I want. I don't think I'm going to get license plates from there, because the plates will be too expensive and the owner will have no time to let me waste my money on crappy license plates.
And I understand they may be busy. But they could have told me that they were busy and find a time they weren't busy instead of having me waste an hour of my life for nothing.
I went to the antique shop in Tomah because the junkyard was such a letdown. I got a red farm plate with the red Wisconsin (which is the current low at around 140700F and I'm suspecting that the red plates may have started at 140001F), a 2003 insert truck license plate, a pair of 2011 insert truck license plates, some truck plates, and one of the last 23,000 wide die license plates made, with the reflective serial (which most wide die license plate serials were nonreflective).
On Friday, I went to another junkyard, which is called L&M Salvage, near Richland Center, Wisconsin. When I got there, it was a pretty large junkyard. We went to the office, and they pointed me out to the junkyard.
Unfortunately, the ground was very muddy. So muddy that my shoes kept getting stuck in the mud.
The first license plate I found was a 2012 Iowa license plate with the blue dies. My dad asked me to get it because it came from Dubuque (which my dad likes Dubuque). The first license plate I picked for my collection was a pair of 2018 truck license plates in very good condition. One thing I was excited to learn was what the sheeting was, because the plate was in the MX series, and the latest 3M plate I knew about was from the MA series and the earliest Avery plate I knew about was from the PA series. I had been suspecting plates from the NC series to be Avery sheeting but I couldn't see the hologram (and people don't like people staring at their license plates from an inch away to find out what the sheeting is. I haven't stuck my face into license plates for about 7 years now but I don't think someone would say "sure go look at my license plate" if I asked them to try to find out what the sheeting was). The plate was on a crushed truck on the bottom of a pile of crushed vehicles.
I kept walking, then found a mystery license plate. I went to cross the ditch, but unfortunately I didn't notice that there was a whole pocket of mud under the tall grass, so both me and my dad had soaking wet shoes with who-knows-what kind of mud soaked into our shoes. The plate was a 1988 farm plate with a remnant of a 1989 sticker.
I walked up to many cars and trucks, and eventually came across a car with its trunk flipped up. I pulled the trunk down, and found a 2019 license plate on it. The month sticker was above the year sticker at the right, and I was in need of a 2019 plate after my November 2019 sticker fell apart and my July 2019 sticker was ruined by Sculpey clay (beware of polymer clay near license plates). Strangely, there was three screws holding the plate on (which was strange)
I spent a lot of time in the trucks section of the junkyard, because I focus on collecting non-passenger license plates.
Of the most notable plates I got was a farm plate from the first 10,000 plates issued in the series, a 2017 truck plate, a truck plate in the MM series that was ziptied to the truck (it has 3M sheeting), and a crumpled up 2003 truck plate. My dad was also walking around and he took some license plates off of trucks. He brought back a 2010 farm plate and a 2018 farm plate (which has a sticker that somehow is in slightly better condition than my 2018 farm plate sticker).
We walked some more, and I came across a plate with a 1988 dual purpose farm plate. I did not have a dual purpose farm plate from 1988, so I tried taking the plate off. It was a borderless dual purpose farm plate from around AZ 5000, and the screws were tiny with a plastic border around them. I couldn't get the screws to turn, so I tried feeling in the back to see if there was any nuts behind the license plate holes, and sure enough, there was two nuts. I took the nuts off and I took the plate off of the truck. The other license plate was from 2003 and I also picked that plate off the truck.
I found a 2009 insert truck plate from the E weight class, and I picked that up even though my dad was telling me we had to go. I couldn't find the other part of the pair sadly, and I'm thinking that Chris, who told me about the junkyard and went there and picked up 63 license plates a year ago, probably took it. I also picked up a 3M truck plate from the DL series, which I would expect to be an Avery plate.
As I was taking my license plates off the scale, I found a pair of 2019 motor home plates just sitting in a pile of stuff. I picked them up and asked how much for the plates. They asked for 50 cents, which was a good deal. All in all I paid $4 for 24 license plates.
Way back in 7th grade, my class was assigned a "Genius Hour" project where we come up with an idea and bring it to live. I did not have very many ideas, until someone in my class suggested I write a book on license plates. I liked the idea, and did a license plate book for my project.
It was more of a picture collection than a book. Many states didn't have text of any kind, it was just images of license plates and their stickers.
I worked on the project on and off until September 27th, 2018, just a couple weeks before I created my website.
I had color tables in my Wisconsin book (I split off the book into individual states/territories/countries because lag), and I looked over them and saw some colors that I did not have on my website.
I've added the old sticker colors to my color tables, listed as "old memory" because I really don't know if the colors are correct or not. Then again, I got September 2012 sticker colors correct from 2012.
I was also looking at my color tables for insert stickers. I noticed that the palette for colors followed a delayed cycle of passenger stickers. September 2016 was red, September 2017 was tan, September 2018 was white, September 2019 was yellow, September 2020 was orange, and it appears that September 2021 might be green. June 2017 was red, June 2018 was tan, June 2019 was white, June 2020 was yellow, June 2021 might be red. March 2018 was red, March 2019 was tan, March 2020 was white, March 2021 was yellow. See a pattern? September stickers use the sticker color of the passenger sticker 2 years ago, June stickers use the sticker color of the passenger sticker 3 years ago, and March stickers use the sticker color of the passenger sticker 4 years ago.
That was a really lazy and bad idea on Wisconsin's part. September 2017 stickers were tan while December 2017 stickers were yellow.
I'm going to update the sticker color predictions.
I went to report a new high for bus license plates, which I saw yesterday on a brand-new school bus, at licenseplates.cc. The bus plate was numbered 27754B, and the plate was so new that there wasn't even an inspection sticker on it.
I then started looking at the numbers because that is what I do when I go to that website. I noticed something shocking. Someone had reported that there is farm license plate numbers all the way up to 367744F! The highest number I had spotted in August was 352078F, which was also right aligned, and this number took me by surprise. Why would it take months to reach another thousand license plates, then issue 15,000 license plates in a month? Why is the number gap so big, instead of the number gap being something I expected? The highest expected number for farm plates right now is no more than 355000F, and that is the highest I can even generously estimate. I estimate the plate numbers are hovering around 352750F.
But that wasn't all. There was a lot of numbers that were much higher than I would expect. The disabled plates were apparently at 63536DS, when I reported that a plate around 56000DS was sent straight from the DMV to Cody James Corbett, another license plate collector, in August. The semi trailer plates are allegedly at 802744 right now, which is above the current expected ranges. I would expect the series of semi trailer plates to be around 790000, not all the way into 800000.
Some ranges they provided were reasonable. They reported C13096 when I've known about C13635 or something like that since spring. They reported 144 RL when I saw the same license plate. They also reported K7926 when I remember a K8076 plate but I don't know if I messed up the serial number or not.
One plate that made me think was WRF-103.
If you are a Wisconsin license plate researcher like me, you would know that the series stopped at WRE. There is no reason why a WRF plate should be issued at all. If they are not lying, it is nearly guaranteed it was a license plate that was never used because the plate would have been issued alongside the black license plates.
Whoever Ben is, I have a feeling they may work at the DMV...
UPDATE: I looked at some serial range history and they reported a truck plate at SO1144, when Wisconsin doesn't even have an O die. Someone named Nate overrode that number with a real license plate number, SN3485. I'm very suspicious of Ben now. I reported a real farm license plate number that I saw in August, and I looked the plate number they reported up on the DOT plate search tool and it came up with "plate not found" which means that the license plate is so far out of the current ranges that they didn't even add the plate to the system as "not issued yet but will be issued soon."
UPDATE 2: I looked at Wikipedia's edits on their serial ranges they report, and this person kept updating the farm plates with higher and higher numbers, the first being from around 358000F then all the way up to that 367000F plate then a 368000F plate. I don't know if the DMV is just very far behind, someone works at the DMV, or if people are seeing wrong, or the people are just straight up lying.
Wisconsin insert license plates are notable for using one of the strangest sticker types in license plate history. Insert stickers.
Wisconsin is not unique for using a sticker color for each quarter. Delaware and Ontario either used or currently use quarterly sticker colors.
The first insert stickers were vertical, long strips of reflective sheeting that took up the entire height of the numbers. The format was:
4
P
Between 1965 and 1967, insert stickers got slightly narrower. Stickers after 1967 use a strange format like:
3 7
P 4
From 1978 to 1979 stickers used a more readable format. Since 1978 insert stickers have been square stickers of half the size of the stickers of the early 70s. The format was a large number to the left, a letter code in the top right and the year in the bottom right.
From 1980 to 1983 stickers used a varying format. The format was a large number to the left and a year with a state identifier and the "WIS" in some random order to the right.
From 1984 to 1991 stickers would either have a vertical month to one side and the other side would consist of a state identifier and a year, or they would have a horizontal month on either the top or bottom and a year with a state identifier on the other side.
From 1992 onward, the format has been a month on the top or bottom and a year with a state identifier on the other side.
Monthly stickers have been issued since at least 1966. In 1966 they were a vertical month and a vertical year:
A 6
P
R 6
From at least 1968 to 1977 monthly stickers were a huge month number/letter and a tiny month code and year
From 1987 to 1991 montly stickers used the same codes that were used on older stickers but respected the color cycles of the quarter. They were a large month identifier with a year and state identifier on the other side.
From 1992 onward montly stickers were the same as insert stickers.
From 1963 from 1979 stickers used letter codes to identify what kind of entity owned the vehicle. The same goes for insert tabs, where C or K meant contractor and P or Z meant Private.
| Letter | Meaning |
|---|---|
| C | Contractor |
| CX | Contractor Reduced Fee |
| P | Private |
| PX | Private Reduced Fe |
| R | Rental |
| T | Tax Only |
| X | Reduced fee? |
| XT | Dairy Truck |
I'm far behind in my website, mostly because I continue to fall behind in school. I'm getting caught up in some classes and I continue to fall behind in others. Online learning is ineffective for me, as I lack motivation and my internet is too slow to handle 2 video calls, Kahoot, and assignments at the same time.
This website was created on October 10, 2018, as part of a school project. I had to copy and paste all the code from my old website to my new website, and while most of the old code has been cleaned up there are old pages that still use my old coding technique.
At first my general technique for coding was similar to what I do today:
<p>Wisconsin started issuing license plates in 1905.</p> <table> <tr style="background-color:#000000; color:#e4e4e4;"> <th>1905-1911</th> <th>1-W<hr></th> </tr> </table>
The main characteristic is that single elements, like <p> and <img>, would always close on the same line, while nested elements, like <table> would have their own separate line for starting and ending tags.
After that, I learned about the importance of whitespace. Me being me I overdid the whitespace to the point that I could not scroll through my trucks page while coding it:
<p>
In 1930, truck plates switched to a July-June cycle, and
they also were significantly different than passenger plates.
While passenger plates dropped weight class codes in 1932,
truck plates kept them. They still use weight classes for all
trucks. And unlike passenger plates, these plates used "WIS"
until 1967.
</p>
<table>
<tr style="background-color:#fffa67; color:#cc0000;">
<th>
30 31
</th>
<th>
A 1
<hr>
</th>
<th>
B 1
<hr>
</th>
<th>
C 1
<hr>
</th>
<th>
D 1
<hr>
</th>
</tr>
Not that long after, I started condensing the tables, while I left the paragraph elements alone. I also added whitespace between the table rows because it made the tables easier to see when coding:
<p>
In 1930, truck plates switched to a July-June cycle, and
they also were significantly different than passenger plates.
While passenger plates dropped weight class codes in 1932,
truck plates kept them. They still use weight classes for all
trucks. And unlike passenger plates, these plates used "WIS"
until 1967.
</p>
<table>
<tr style="background-color:#fffa67; color:#cc0000;">
<th>30 31</th>
<th>A 1<hr></th>
<th>B 1<hr></th>
<th>C 1<hr></th>
<th>D 1<hr></th>
</tr>
<tr>
After I moved my website I stopped doing that method because it was annoying and unnecessary to have single elements on a minimum of 3 lines. Unfortunately, even to this day there are still a few areas where I haven't fixed the code to be on one single line, such as some footer areas.
After that, around 2019 I started a new method of coding, where if the element was minor enough it would be put on a single line, such as single row tables, while more major elements, such as large tables, would be put onto multiple lines.
<h1>Disabled Veteran Truck</h1><hr>
<p>Disabled Veteran Truck plates, while
similar in name to Disabled Truck plates, their color cycles
tend to be bizarre and don't really line up with any plate
type. Between 1981 and 1987 they followed Truck plate cycles,
then in 1990 a base was issued that was the same as Light
Truck For Hire plates.</p>
<table>
<tr style="background-color: #ffff00; color: #cc0000;">
<th>90</th>
<th>9001</th></tr></table> Unfortunately, that method breaks the tab alignment of my HTML, and it looks uneven and ugly, so I stopped doing that coding.
My current coding rules are as follows:
I've also used five distinct navigation bar styles, and I recently tried to have the individual plate types only pop up after the user of this site clicks on a dropdown.
The first navigation bar was a basic HTML navigation bar, and it was basically just a link from the home page to the trucks page:
(in case you were wondering, the links take you to the pages.)
The second navigation bar I discovered today after seeing a comment on the old navigation bar. I completely forgot about this navigation bar, and even as I am writing this right now I don't know what this navigation bar looks like.
This was an unreleased navigation bar test. It was a navigation bar test from around October 2018.
The third navigation bar was the one that was used on my old website. It followed the cyan theme better than the old navigation bars, and it was less bulky.
The fourth navigation bar was the main navigation bar that is still used on some pages I abandoned (like this). It was almost identical to the last navigation bar, but the links weren't underlined.
The fifth navigation bar is the current navigation bar, with the large button style. The current navigation bar has been used since February 2019, though some of the pages didn't get the new navigation bar until September 2020.
There is another navigation bar that was used for the start of my new website in August. I had gotten bored over the summer, so I decided to just start over with my website because the code was so bad. I didn't like the curren color scheme so I reversed the color scheme because it looked nice. This is what the navigation bar looked like:
I abandoned the project because I didn't have the motivation to create a whole new website from scratch when the old website was still usable.
Back when the website was first created, I was actually planning on creating a branch of my website devoted to Minnesota, llinois, and New York license plates. I abandoned the pages very quickly after creating them. I knew nothing about the plates, and I was focusing more on my Wisconsin section. The pages still exist, and if you care enough to see them they are in my old navigation bars that are above this text.
My website in general has been influenced by my life at the time. When I first created this website in 2018, I was actively collecting Wisconsin, New York, Illinois, and Minnesota license plates. I still collected out of state license plates, and up until at least January 1, 2019, I was still collecting out of state license plates.
Around 2019 I stopped collecting out of state license plates to focus on Wisconsin license plates. I still have my old collections and in January 2020 I dropped a lot of money on Minnesota license plates because they were cheap and I wasn't finding many Wisconsin license plates.
Cranfest 2019 marked a major turning point in my collecting focus. Before that my focus was all Wisconsin license plates, and after that, because I found a whole bunch of insert truck license plates that I couldn't afford and could only take home 2 license plates, I had a big interest in insert license plates.
My focus shifted on October 11, 2020 from collecting insert license plates in general to collecting specific plates with insert stickers I don't have yet.
The collectors at the meet were talking about their "almost impossible runs" and how nearly every collector had one of those runs. After that I decided to make my "almost impossible run" to be collecting one of every single insert sticker that would ever exist, which includes every letter code from every quarter AND monthly stickers.
I know about monthly stickers since at least 1966, and I know of C, CX, P, PX, R, T, X, XT sticker types from 1963 to 1979, and after that since at least 1987 there have been monthly stickers. From what I know, if I wanted just one of every sticker color, there are 12 sticker colors from 1963-1965, 60 sticker colors from 1966-1977, and 176 sticker colors from 1978-2021, for a total of 248 sticker colors to collect right now, and if I wanted 1 of every type of sticker, there are 8 types of stickers for 4 quarters of stickers, so there are 32 sticker types for just quarterly stickers from 1963 to 1979 for each year, 44 sticker types from 1966-1977 for each year, at least 32 sticker types for 1978-1979 for each year, at least 4 sticker types for 1980-1986 for each year, 12 sticker types for 1987-2021 for each year, and also typeless stickers that apparently exist for 1978 and 1979. Add all that up together and there are 96 sticker types for 1963-1965, 528 sticker types for 1966-1977, at least 66 sticker types for 1978-1979, at least 28 sticker types for 1980-1986, and 420 sticker types for 1987-2021. That makes for a grand total of: at least 1,138 sticker types to collect. Taking into account possibilities of montly stickers from 1963-1965 and 1978-1986, there are 748 sticker types for 1963-1979 and 504 sticker types for 1980-2021, so there is a potential of 1,252 sticker types for me to collect. That is nearly twice the amount of license plates I have.
When I went to the license plate meet, I got this September 2017 insert truck plate:
I know that December 2017 insert stickers were yellow. If you don't know already, yellow and gold stickers are so hard to tell apart that I've confused them multiple times. I confused the tan 2022 stickers for yellow stickers, and I assumed a June 2018 sticker for 2 years was yellow.
At this point, I don't think any thought is put into insert sticker color cycles. They might as well have a chicken pick the sticker colors, because at this point a chicken would do a better job picking sticker colors.
I heard a story that a pink plate was proposed where they design license plates, and they thought it was a dumb idea. So that's why there are so many 1990 pink backed apportioned plates.
I wonder how those same people would feel knowing that two confusable sticker colors were used two quarters in a row. Then again, they did the same thing in 1996 with December 1995 and December 1996 stickers, and for a while I didn't know the difference between the two stickers.
I went to my first license plate (mini) meet yesterday.
We had to leave at 9AM because the meet started very early in the morning. I had asked to use my birthday money that day because I was broke, much like my first Cranfest. I simply didn't know about this meet even being possible, and I didn't know the mini meets even existed until September.
We tried finding out where this meet was. The meet was at this street called Fern Dr. I saw Fern Ln, thinking they may have gotten the wrong street name. My dad said that was the wrong street. I was confused. Then I saw Fern Ave. Then Fawn Ave.
We had to pull up a GPS just to find out where Fern Dr. was. It was off of Fern Ln.
That was probably the dumbest street naming system.
The first thing I noticed was that it was cold outside. I looked around and saw some vehicles and some tables with license plates on them. I expected that, and looked for insert truck license plates immediately.
I was shocked when I found 1985, 1987, and September 2018 insert truck license plates, all for a combined price of $15.
I went looking some more, and I picked up a 1987 motor home license plate. I asked who had the plate, and I was told that they were talking with my dad. Apparently my dad knew this person from work 30 years ago. If that coincidence wasn't enough they were the first person to send me a friend request on Facebook.
I told my dad to hold on to it, and then I found a lot of boxfuls of license plates. Most were passenger plates or out-of-state plates, but there was a lot of bad condition insert truck license plates for a total price of $15. They also were offering me some cool license plates I wanted, like a monthly tractor plate and the 52nd insert truck plate issued in the base. I unfortunately spent all my money before I could get the plates.
I went looking some more and found some more crappy insert truck plates. Among the worst of the plates was a 1990 insert truck license plate I had seen on Facebook. The plate was completely folded up like someone tried origami with it at first. I found it somewhat unbent, but still crumpled up. It was a dollar like every other plate in the box, so I couldn't leave it behind.
I found some more plates at this other table, and one plate that caught my attention was a 2006 trailer plate, made on an Avery light truck for hire base. The person who had the plate apparently didn't notice that, and he said that it was another reason why it was a good deal.
I ended up getting 24 plates for $60. That is the same amount of plates I get at Cranfest, but for half the price.
I've been ripped off on eBay too many times. Plates that were marked $3 I bought for $10.
I also took lots of pictures of plates I didn't buy. I also learned about some interesting license plates that I'm going to have to add to this website, like private lessor, not for hire lessor, semi topper plate...
We went to my grandma's house after that. We didn't know if they were home, but we went anyway to see if they were home. I took a group picture of my plates on the porch and posted it to Facebook.
Even my sister enjoyed the meet. She ended up getting 2 bicycle plates and a 1983 Germany plate for free, and I got her a 2011 truck plate because it was a 2011 plate.
When I got home, I grabbed a screwdriver and started attempting to unbend the 1990 insert truck plate. I was able to get most of the plate unbent, and now the plate looks like it was run over by a car rather than thrown like a frisbee, hammered, and run over by a tank.
I went on Facebook today and decided to start downloading some license plate photos for reference (and maybe for my website if they allow it). I went to the Wisconsin license plate group on Facebook, clicked on the profile I was looking for, and looked through the entire list of photos back to October 2019 or so. I downloaded photos I didn't already have downloaded. I then stumbled upon nothing but albums full of license plate images. Each album took too long for me to download, and at times I felt like I was going to get carpel tunnel from how much I was downloading.
I then ended up accidentally backing out after that, and at that point I thought I had enough photos for now. I checked the folder that my images were downloaded in, and the amount of photos that was shown was 14... The other digits were cut off, and I only saw that when there was more than 999 photos. I thought it was impossible I just downloaded 1400 photos, but sure enough, I go into my files app and get the folder info and it says there are over 1400 files in the folder.
Yeah, I have way too much work to do. Don't expect any updates to the serial ranges for a few weeks.
I noticed that it was sunny out today. I had taken my whole license plate collection down so I could take pictures of them yesterday, but by then it was too late in the day so I had to pack it up. I decided that during my 49 minute long lunch break (don't ask me why my school doesn't just call it a 50 minute or an hour lunch break) I would take pictures of my license plates with my tablet. My new camera, unfortunately, is lower resolution than my old camera.
My new tablet was $50 more than my old tablet, yet it is only half the tablet. The only upgrade was the OS, the battery life, and the size of the screen (which was achieved by making the pixels larger rather than adding more pixels). Everything else was a downgrade or was the same. The camera is the worst downgrade of all the downgrades, as the camera is much lower resolution than my old camera. It doesn't even have glass over the camera component, so I could quite literally sneeze into my camera and break it. Another major downgrade is the lack of an HDMI port. Apparently HDMI ports on tablets used to be a thing but as newer tablets were made I guess nobody wanted to have their games broadcast into a TV. I use my Xbox remote for gaming on my tablet anyways, so it still is somewhat like having a regular game system. Another thing I don't like about my new tablet is the position of the SD card slot. The slot is right in the open like every other SD card slot (which is dumb).
Back to the license plate images thing, I took my images very quickly. I grabbed a plate, took a picture, then put it into a box sloppily and grabbed another plate. Unfortunately I missed putting a plate into a box and threw it onto my pavement. I don't think the plate was damaged but now I have to wash it, so that'll be fun.
As I was taking images, there was a garbage truck that went by. EVERY time the garbage truck goes by, the first thing I think about is the license plate on the truck. Garbage trucks from my town are the only places where I have ever found N weight class insert truck license plates. So, I looked at the plate, and memorized the number, NB 4842. I then proceeded to attempt to take a picture of the plate. It was sunny out, and unfortunately I couldn't see my screen and how the sun was washing out the entire image. I took images of individual license plate characters as a way to record the plate number in case the plate couldn't be read (which I'm glad I wrote the number down because I forgot the plate number later on).
I was expecting most of my images to be blurry, out of frame, and overall bad. When I looked at all my pictures after school, the plate images were fine. So, I guess this will be the last time in at least a few months that I will take my entire plate collection down for photography. EDIT: I just remembered I only took pictures of non-passenger plates, excluding some moped, older motorcycle, snowmobile, and bicycle plates, so I'm going to eventually take a whole bunch more pictures of plates.
For years I've kept taking my plates down for photography. It's just something I've done. The first time I took plates down for photography was for group images of my collection and just images to show my collection. I don't know why I did that, I guess just so I could enjoy my license plates in a medium other than sitting on my wall. I then took images so I could show people my plate collection.
Later on, I took images of my license plates for this book I was writing. I wasn't planning on releasing the book at any point. Then I took pictures of all my Wisconsin license plates for my website in October 2018. I took all my plates down recently to take temporary replacement photos, and now I've taken a lot of plates down for replacement photos, because as you can see right now a lot of images are broken, and the images that still work are not the best.
I have downloaded my old photos, and I'm now removing them from my site. This site is crowded enough as it is, and with all these images it just isn't practical anymore. This website takes too long for me to load each page, so I've removed the images from this site. Soon I will upload the old images to my other site, which I have no problem with uploading images there.
With this new image move, I will make the images smaller so it's faster for the site to load.
I'm adding many images exclusively of insert truck and light truck for hire plates right now. I've spend the last week or so downloading, screenshotting, cropping, straightening, and uploading images. Expect many more images to come sometime soon, but I just added way too many images so I wouldn't count on it.
It's 11pm where I am now. Just another piece of proof I'm way too obsessed with Wisconsin license plates.
Right now, I've been working on bugfixing things. There have been multiple typos, floats I forgot to clear, and text just stuffed between images. I've fixed that now, and I will continue to fix problems as I find them.
I have also noticed that my images take too long to load. I'm going to make them smaller so that it don't take as long to load, and I will link the full size images in the images.
I also found 5 old images that I never used on this website at all. They were duplicates to images from another website I used to use, and an image from when I was going to add a stickers section. I have taken images of all the non-passenger stickers in my collection right now, and I'm going to crop them and eventually upload them to my website. I'm going to have to remove the old images and move them over to my other website because this website takes too long to load.
For 2 years, this website has been structured like crap. Everything is messy and unorganized, many parts of the website are broken in some way, and every serial range I provide I never, EVER do anything to make sure that I or others can verify it. That's changing now. All future updates to serial ranges I will add the date that I added the update, AND there will be a link to the source, if it is something that anyone can find.
All old stuff will be the same. I don't know when I added the updates, and many times I don't know where the number came from either. I can't verify that I didn't mess up somehow.
I'm also making all the tables consistent. Each table will have the first two columns reserved for the base and the variation, whether or not there is variations. I will provide a header for each table, because some people who are new here may not know what I'm talking about. I will add a caption on each table explaining that it is the number ranges.
Lastly, the code will be cleaned up as I work on it. The code is a nightmare to work on since it is so messy. It won't change anything for most people but for coders like me it is something I should have done a year ago.
I've been waiting on cleaning up this website for way too long now. I also need to stop waiting on adding the images. I've had broken images for nearly a year now that still haven't been added.
Also, off topic, but I've observed two different kinds of temporary plates: one that follows the A0000A format and one that follows an A0000AA format. The latter series had a number of BnnnnGE, and I unfortunately forgot the numbers. I don't know the difference between the two temporary plates. I also spotted a blue-on-white temporary plate that followed a 0000AA format, and the DMV inquiry tool comes up with temporary plates, yet I've double checked the number in that format and it has come up with nothing. Maybe it's from out of state?
The For Hire Lessor plates were supplemental plates for truck plates, kind of like PSC plates. Someone on the Wisconsin License Plates group asked the same question and they got that answer.
I was looking at the DOT website a few days ago, and I came across this:
Wisconsin now has Autocycle plates. I never knew Wisconsin had done this, so I looked it up and apparently the bill that created these plates was signed in November 2019. This would be the newest license plate type yet, and I know someone in my town who has one of those things and has a regular motorcycle plate on it.
Also, insert truck plates for the R weight class have reached RB30721. I've also been paying attention to temporary plates. The low is TnnnnU and the high is T6690X. (the ns were written down on my notepad but I'm at school so I don't have the notebook)
I thought I would document the mystery plates here. There are two different bike-sized plates, one that says for hire lessor on it and the other just says "WIS FEB" on it. The for hire lessor plates I've seen before, but I've never known what they are. The current example I'm looking at is black on white and is dated 1971. The other plates are blue on black. What ARE they?
Since I last posted here, a lot has changed. First of all, I've bought a lot of license plates, mostly insert plates. The first bunch of plates came from eBay, the last pile of plates came from a shed and an antique shop
I also bought a notepad in June, and I've written down hundreds of numbers since then.
The other day I was in front of a store in Westby, WI, and there were a lot of new plates that drove by, a total of 10 plate numbers I had to memorize. I didn't have my notepad with me, so I had to memorize a lot of plates, XF10216, XR43423, DH20661, DR54690, DR54815, FB32324, TB4599, 351495F, 351731F, and DFnnnnn (I wrote that down immediately after I saw it). I also saw more plates after that, so I wrote the plates down. I saw GR10884 today, so I memorized that plate.
There is going to be a lot of updates in the next few days as I have 3 months of research to add.
Here is a list of plates that I've bought since I last posted:
1978 Insert Truck, DB series, dated June 1978 and September 1979
1981-1985 Motor Home, dated March 1981 (partially), September 1981 (partially), March 1983, March 1984 (partially), March 1985
1980 Tractor, RA 962 something, dated December 1981
1984 Tractor, SA 273, dated December 1985
1994 Insert Truck, EC 304, narrow prefix, dated December 2001
2002 Endangered Resources Red
1964 Farm
1966 Farm
1969 Farm
1973 Farm
1980 Farm
1994 Farm
1951 narrow dies steel
1975 Truck (with 1977 and 1978 sticker bits)
1984
1989 red with white back
1990 yellow borderless
1981
2009 Insert Truck dated December 2019
1988 Insert Truck
1988 Motor Home, dated March 1988
I've ordered some more license plates on eBay: one 1985 sticker mania motor home plate (likely with a 3rd quarter 1981 sticker and a 1983 sticker with the March 1985 sticker) and one pair of 1978 insert truck plates (with one 2p 1978 sticker and one 3p 1979 sticker on each plate).
I dropped $50 on the plates in total. $25 came from my parents because I made the A honor roll at my school for getting a GPA of beteween 3.500 and 4.000, the other $25 I borrowed from my Cranfest fund.
I will add the images of the plates when I get them in the mail, which the estimated time is between tomorrow and Thursday, though with all the Minnesota burnings and protests they may never come. For all I know someone burned down the mail truck that is delivering the plates to me.
It is kind of boring being cooped up in my house day in and day out. I don't have great internet (because I'm on mobile hotspot as our house doesn't have wi-fi) so updates to this website will be rare until school comes back...
...Which, from what I hear, won't be until at least September. Though it is likely that frequent updates to this site won't come until 2021.
Even though COVID-19 has spoiled spring antique shopping (and possibly even Cranfest), that doesn't mean I haven't done anything with license plates.
Since the stay-at-home orders came, I have gotten 4 license plates. I will add images once I get them... though these days it's not going to happen anytime soon. First of all, there aren't many sunny days, and second of all I really hate taking pictures of license plates. I have to deal with getting it in the right area and making sure my tablet doesn't fall on my license plates again. Then I have to crop/straighten the photos, put the SD card in my Chromebook, then upload them to my Google site so my website doesn't take too long to load, then I have to add the image on to my website, copying the entire URL.
The first plate was actually pretty cool. It's a 1978 sticker mania insert farm plate. It's in really bad condition, but for $2.99 I couldn't say no. I wanted the plate a lot, and my mom said she would get it eventually. Unfortunately, the plate I wanted more (the one with the 1975 sticker on it) ended up selling. I told my mom that it had to be bought NOW or it will get swiped up. She ordered it, and made me leave it in the package for 4 days because of COVID-19 (even though there is little evidence that mail can transfer COVID-19). When I got the plate, it was bent on the bottom right corner. I blamed it on the mailman that jammed it diagonally in the mailbox. I opened the plate and realized that I actually got the license plate I wanted in the first place. Somehow they sent me the wrong plate of the pair. Mom made me soap the plate down (I tried to keep the dirt on it in case the person wanted the plates to be swapped and they like plates with dirt) and I waited for the feedback of the user. The person who got my plate left a positive review for the plate. They either didn't notice or thought it would be too much trouble to swap plates. Or maybe they just didn't care.
On Easter, I got $20 that I could cash out or use on eBay. I at first wanted to save it, as there was a plate meet a couple hours away around that time, and I wanted to keep the money in case we somehow go there (Quarantines stop, they postpone it, etc.). Then I figured it probably would be cancelled, so I asked mom for 2 more plates (and possibly a third one), and we were cut a deal on the most expensive one, which was a 1987 insert farm plate. My mom quickly picked up the plate, and I requested that they hold the plate because I was planning on getting more plates.
They had to send it out, otherwise they would get docked for not shipping in a timely manner (not their fault but it sucked). I found 2 more plates, and I asked what the shipping price would be for the two plates. One was a 1958 insert farm with no foreground paint left (basically just a white square), and the other was a 1983 insert farm plate that was 3 digits (it will go well with my 1982 insert farm plate, EA 196).
The plates came today... and I'm waiting on an answer as to when I can open them. I've done plenty of research and they keep saying that they will discuss it... even though I have legitimate sources that say I'm fine to open it. WebMD says that COVID-19 lasts on aluminum for 4-8 hours or so (which is what all three license plates are made of) and the CDC says there is very low risk of COVID-19 from mail. They say it might be possible if I was to touch the mail then my face, but to prevent that they say to use gloves or to wipe it down. It does not say to leave the package for multiple days untouched.
I will have to update this page when I take the pictures... which may be Thursday or maybe not until next week.
UPDATE SEPTEMBER 2020: Wow. I'm really procrastinating on updating my images. I spend 3 days cropping, straightening, renaming, and resizing hundreds of low resolution group photos from an auction website yet I can't spend an hour taking photos, cropping and straightening them, then uploading them to my website. I've taken the pictures, I'm just going to crop them in the near future and upload them on a different website so I don't clog up my website with pictures.
Also, an update to 2022 Wisconsin license plate stickers... I was looking at a farm plate that was parked, and I studied it closely. The sticker is actually black on tan.
Maybe that is one reason why it is a dumb idea to use black on tan and black on yellow stickers in the same year (and yes, in 2019 March and September stickers had that exact scenario. I misidentified the sticker color of June 2018 stickers for over a year because of that. They are also black on tan, though I haven't updated the sticker colors yet.)
Here is the color palette for 2019 insert stickers:
| Insert Stickers 2019 | Mar | Jun | Sep | Dec |
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Unfortunately, the color palette for 2020 isn't much better. In recent years, it seems Wisconsin has gotten lazy when thinking of sticker colors for insert stickers... In 2016, they used pinkish-red and red in the same year! 2020 uses yellow and orange stickers... one quarter apart. Here is the color table for 2020:
| Insert Stickers 2020 | Mar | Jun | Sep | Dec |
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All of those colors I have confused with each other. I've probably confused yellow and white, as they are very low contrast. Let's see what white on yellow looks like: bad contrast. I've also confused orange and pink. It's hard to tell the difference between a 2018 sticker and between a 2020 sticker. Come on, Wisconsin, multiple types jump from 2018 to 2020, and the contrast between the two is low enough that it can be hard to tell the difference at a glance. low contrast Also keep in mind that yellow and orange are not good mix... unless you are trying to make a graphic of a jack-o-lantern, which, in that case, it don't matter. But when it comes to law enforcement and validation of official identifiers, this kind of stuff is very important.
bad contrast
Wisconsin's sticker colors have been pretty basic since 2012: white, red, orange, yellow, mint, blue, black, pink, and tan. Very few sticker colors since 2012 have featured anything but black text (only two I can think of at all, and those are 2013 and 2014 September insert stickers). While it might have high contrast, that does not mean that it is high contrast compared to other sticker backgrounds.
This weekend, I went to La Crosse... specifically to Grandad's bluff and some stores.
On the trip to and from there, I was keeping my eyes peeled for new plate serials (as well as that annoying 2022 sticker). Instead of trying to memorize every serial and hope I'm not a number off, I decided to pull up SurvivalCraft (A Minecraft-like game) and write my notes on some green signs. I then got my tablet, got my chromebook, then typed my notes into the search bar, then added the notes to my website.
If I didn't know the highs or lows of a series, I just wrote down whatever plate it was. I ended up getting new high numbers for a bunch of insert truck license plates, a new low for insert trailer license plates, and I learned about 2022 stickers (and 2021 Minnesota stickers).
One of the most elusive license plate stickers at the moment is 2022 stickers. Andrew Turnbull told me that someone said that 2022 sticker colors were planned to be black on white... and I wasn't so sure I believed whoever said that. I've been trying to find farm plates for a couple of weeks now... and almost all of the plates I have found either been expired or were only the front plates. Then came this slow farm truck hauling a small empty trailer that was dropping stray hay. I noticed the sticker didn't appear to be pink, so when we passed the farm truck I paid close attention to the sticker, which appeared to be yellow.
One of many things happened. One: I saw wrong. Two: Farm plates now have different sticker colors than passenger plates. Three: The person was wrong. Four: Wisconsin changed their mind at the last second.
What is amazing is that I originally predicted 2021 and 2022 stickers correctly. I predicted 2021 stickers to be black on blue back in 2018 after I saw that 2018, 2019, and 2020 stickers very closely resembled boat stickers expiring the same year. 2021 was blue, so I gave a guess that maybe 2021 would be blue (though I thought it to be unlikely). After Andrew Turnbull put 2021 as black on white on his color tables, I predicted 2022 to be black on yellow, because a lot of insert stickers had been using nothing but black, white, and yellow for sticker colors. 2020 was the year the trend made it to March stickers, and because of that, they couldn't use white again for September stickers, so they FINALLY changed the sticker color to orange. 2021 isn't known at the moment, though I wouldn't be surprised if March 2021 stickers were yellow.
At Grandad's bluff, we were driving by a house up on top of Grandad's bluff... and I spotted two license plates sitting on the fence that I believed to be Amateur Radio plates. I walked down to the house, and sure enough, they were Amateur Radio plates. I took some pictures, then left and cropped the pictures after I got home.
I've spent all weekend taking, cropping, straightening, resizing, renaming, and organizing about 200 license plate images. Most are from an auction site called wyoderauction.com (used with permission), but about 20-30 are my own images I took yesterday. I've uploaded them to my google site so that my website doesn't take an eternity to load. I only have about 50-75 images here, and it takes a long time to load this website.
Wow. It's been a long time since I've posted here. I decided to leave Code.org in January, after testing to see if I could host a site on Google Sites. I just decided to abandon that project, because it was too much work. My color tables kept breaking because of my crappy Javascript. I couldn't use side scroll since the site didn't support side scrolling, so I left that mess and decided to come back a month later.
The DOT website has a plate search tool. I use this tool to research my expected ranges, espcecially for rare insert plates I would never know anything about. While the DOT tool isn't perfect for everything, it is a valuable resource. I've also found some unexpected finds.
At first, I thought that most invalid series were completely wiped from the system. After all, I usally wouldn't find many older insert plates on the system, and even a 2012 88 series passenger plate was unable to be found. Or so I thought.
I was researching tractor license plates, when I was researching the DS series I came across many 2005 plates. At first, I was shocked to find that. But, it turns out that I found out that there are plenty of 1994 series insert truck plates on the system.
I ended up stumbling upon a crazy find while researching GS tractor plates. I searched up GS 10 and it came up with a 3/31/96 expiration date. I was shocked; I didn't think this website would have existed this long, or even would have had something like this. Yet, here it was, a 1996 plate sitting on a plate search webiste, with the site not even claiming that the registration can't be renewed.
Other 1994 plates are a hit or a miss. For example, I could look up XC 5107 on my website (found at Grateful Shed, it expired in 12/31/03.) My plate, DG24087, expired in 12/08, and it didn't come up on the search.
I heard of this place called the Grateful Shed Truckyard, a restauraunt in Wisconsin Dells, WI. We went there in August.
We went, and there were more plates than I would imagine. There was the staircase that I saw, with a bunch of 1994 insert plates there. Then there was upstairs, which also had a bunch of Wisconsin plates I needed for my website, like these:
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Some of those plates were on the back wall, which is why some of them are very hard to see. Others were sitting right in plain sight, so there wasn't much trouble taking pictures of them. Here is what the wall looked like:
These are various plates I found from Wisconsin on the staircase that I needed for my website:
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I wasn't working on my website Friday since I wasn't at school that day. I also won't be at school this Friday so I'm going to write my article on Thursday.
Insert plates are somewhat common. In fact, in this series alone for the X weight code, there are over 100,000 license plates issued in just 10 years. With all the insert truck plates issued for the last 10 years, there are probably between 290,000 and 310,000 insert truck plates issued in just a decade.
However, most of those 300,000 plates are from common series; the most common series are D, X, G, H, and E. There are probably about another hundred thousand insert plates out there, but the bulk of those would be lighter trailer plates below the E series and heavy tractor plates from the T series. There are a lot more series of insert plates out there that are from rare series. According to Andrew Turnbull, there could be as many as 478 different series of insert plates out there since 1992.
Tractor plates seem to be some of the hardest to find, not because truck-tracors don't exist anymore, but because most truck-tractors recieve apportioned plates (which is why there are nearly 300,000 apportioned plates out there since 1999). The most common weight code for tractor plates is T, with about 30,000 plates being issued since 1994. The rarest code I know to exist is the B weight code. The A series has yet to be confirmed. The E series is the lightest tractor series I have seen a picture of, and there only appears to be a few hundred of them in existence. The B series does exist; however, it is so rare that there is yet to be a single plate issued. According to the Wisconsin DOT license plate lookup, BS 50 would give a "Plate Not Found" error (the error that occurs when someone looks up a 94 series plate most times) and BS 51 would give "Plate has no current or prior registrations", which usually means that there are sequential plates in that series, but rather it just has yet to be issued. If the plate search is true, then that means that the B weight code tractor plates would be the rarest current Wisconsin license plate I know of. The C weight code only has about 15 registrations confirmed for the current base, from CS 80 to around CS 93.
Heavy trailer license plates are another rare type of plate. Trailer plates beyond the Y series tend to be rare. The T series, for example, only has a serial up to TR 82 confirmed. The Q series has a plate with an expiration date of 12/31/08, which would mean it is most likely a 94 series plate. QR 76 gives the not issued yet error.
I don't know much about Special-UX and Z plates before 2004 and farm trailer plates, so there isn't much to report on there yet.
License plates are usually used for a specific time period. While it would be difficult to tell if a plate was used while it was expired unless it was still on the vehicle, there is a way to tell if a plate was used later than its intended period.
Plates used beyond their intended period are very rare for pre-graphic plates. I've only confirmed a 1985 sticker on a 1973 base plate.
I've confirmed so far (format of each set of information: (type), base (issuance year), validated to):
73 85
88 (91), 12
88 (94), 09
88 (97), 13
Moped 89, 93
Trailer 94, 09
Truck 88, 02
I have also spotted other plates that are expired, still on vehicles. While these are plates that are not on the road, these are plates that still are stuck on vehicles somewhere in Wisconsin. I have spotted so far: (last number year on vehicle last confirmed)
88 (91), 12, 19
01 (05), 17, 19
01 (14?), 14, 18
01 (13), 15, 19
Truck 88, (unknown), 19
Truck 94, (unknown), 17
Semi Trailer 78, 79, 08
Semi Trailer 80, 81, 08
Semi Trailer 82, 83, 19
The beginnings of reflective license plates started in the mid 20th century. I heard somewhere the first reflective plates came out in the 1930s, but it seems a little advanced for that time period. The firs reflectorization started with fine glass particles put on top of wet foreground paint. It seems that midwestern states have a tendency to use this method of reflectorization, though that is just a generalization based on Michigan, Iowa, and Missouri. I've also seen Pennsylvania use this method.
A slightly later method was scotchlite reflective sheeting, by 3M. These plates came around the late 50's with Minnesota. Most states would use 3M reflective sheeting by the 70s. Plates started going graphic during this time too; some states immediately started with graphic plates, while others would use just regular plates at first then use graphic plates.
During the late 90s and early 2000s lots of states switched to Avery sheeting. There really wasn't that much wrong with 3M sheeting (excluding some cases of sheeting cracking when stored in barns for long times). I guess the company was cheaper (other collectors mentioned that Avery isn't as fading prone, but I've seen more faded Wisconsin plates than 3M.) Unfortunatly, the plates were also prone to lifting off the serial number and blistering around it, retracting back and exposing bare metal:
Many states started to come back to 3M, realizing there was a terrible problem. "Coincidentally", around 2007, which is when the states really started switching back to 3M, the sheeting became prone to graying, delaminating, and falling apart in general:
Something changed in 2007. This problem isn't even unique to Wisconsin; a google search of "peeling license plate" will bring up Wisconsin, Michigan, California, and Illinois just in the search bar. In fact, I have confirmed this problem in Wisconsin, California, Ontario, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland & Labrador, and New Brunswick.
A lot of today's plates are falling apart. A lot of plates expose bare metal, and many people have to color in their numbers again.
Wisconsin switched back to Avery sheeting in 2017. Wisconsin is the only state I know about that currently uses Avery sheeting.
Interestingly enough, there is a car at a campground I go to, and there is a plate that has been sitting outside since 1990, GNL-000 (censored since it was validated to 2012. I know it isn't supposed to be valid that long, but still it will be censored at the moment), and it is in amazing condition, yet plates from a decade ago are bare metal.
1 year of this website
I know, it isn't a Monday or a Friday, but since the real anniversary of this website being created was on a Thursday, I felt it was only appropriate to write this on a Thursday.
I went into my Computer Science Discoveries for one of my electives last year. It was only one semester, while all my other classmates continued on after I left.
In October, we started working with HTML, and, on October 10, 2018, we created our own websites. At first, it looked something like this:
Click on a state to see its page. I will add the other states sometime
You kind of get the idea. I don't want to make this too long. Note how it used something similar to Times New Roman. The website also had a white background for about a week or two.
Around October 22, 2018, I created my truck plate page. I created it for a multi-page website, and only added the list for the list requirement. I eventually made them links, and added the basic idea into my navigation bar.
The truck plate page was also the first one to use a table and to use the background color. (interesting fail: I used a colon as a period here because of the background-color CSS command)
The first experiments with CSS weren't very good. They came out downright ugly. I started out with the background color powder blue, which is what text is colored when you highlight something.
I then tested with different shades of blue. I finally settled on light cyan, which makes the site look nice and makes it easier on me so that unknown colors for my color tables don't get confused with the background.
I started experimenting with a header around this time. I started with a blue color, and it didn't come out nice:
In late November, I moved my website after I found out that the website would likely be wiped as the end of the unit came. It still sits there to this day.
In December, I added more states, which continue to be blank pages because I'm too focused on Wisconsin plates.
In February, I added the normal navigation bar that only a few pages still use
Since then, my website hasn't changed that much. I've just added some information.
It has been a long time since I last wrote here... mostly I was either busy or I didn't feel like writing an article. I will write 4 articles today just to make up for all the articles I missed.
Wisconsin truck plates are complicated. That is just a simple phrase to describe truck plates. They are way too overcomplicated.
Truck plates started off somewhat simple: a plate similar to passenger plates, aside from the state name format. In 1923, plates would gain weight codes, and were the only type to be confirmed to have weight codes for 1923.
After 1930, plates changed, a lot. They weren't as complex to study as passenger plates, since there aren't any major changes to note. There are, however, a lot of weight codes to track. After 1940, truck plates became complex beyond belief.
In 1941, insert truck plates were introduced. In addition to tracking a lot of new weight codes, there also were light truck for hire plates in existence, with the added 32 variations of tab colors to track. Formats would change regularly.
Once stickers came along, insert truck and truck plates started using similar color cycles, which makes plates slightly less complicated. Monthly stickers were added in the mid-1960s.
In 1974, a seris of plates were issued. This alone wouldn't be complicated, but the 1974 series of truck plates was very complex. The plates started out with the crude dies that the last series left off on. The double letter plates existed for insert truck plates. Lighter insert truck plates were reflective, while heavier insert truck plates weren't reflective. In 1976, the expiration date changed, and 1976 stickers weren't issued. In 1978, weight codes shifted, and A truck plates became common, while D truck plates were now insert truck plates. The codes were wrong, so 1979 stickers had 3 different colors depending on what the weight of the truck was. In 1980, stickers had the weight number on them. Meanwhile, insert plates were completely changed; Special-UX and Z plates gained weight codes, weight classes shifted a lot, eliminating the XA-XF series and V series, all plates now had double-letters on them, the format of insert stickers changed twice. During this time, insert sticker colors were unique.
After 1980, truck plates were less complex. Lots of unnecessary types were dropped in 2004, so there isn't much to report on now. Right now, the only thing to look after is September insert stickers... they are hard to find.
America's Dairyland has been the slogan of passenger license plates in Wisconsin since 1940. While there have been different variations as to whether the slogan was at the top or bottom, for the most part, it remained largely unchanged (the same can't be said for the dies; they changed regularly). But since 1988, I've noticed something interesting.
In 1987, graphic plates were issued. In the beginning, the America's Dairyland slogan was at the bottom of the plate, fairly in line with the bottom of the border.
Once black plates came along, the America's Dairyland slogan moved down slightly, where the regular letters would touch the bottom of the border and the bottom of the y would go below the border. Shortly after this, the slogan shifted up a little.
Up until recently, the slogan remained unchanged. However, once Avery sheeting returned, the slogan shifted up yet again, this time moving half an inch above the border.
These pictures show just how much America's Dairyland has moved. Oddly enough, America's Dairyland is moving at about a couple inches per year, thanks to tectonic plates.
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I have some red series truck plates. All 5 stickered plates have something interesting about them (other than their weight codes).
I have a 1997 truck plate... but with the border cut off. What the reason was for cutting a border off of a license plate, I don't know, but it has poked me multiple times. Ouch.
I have a 1999 truck plate that is sticker mania... kind of a cool plate.
I also have a 2001 truck plate, red series, that has the stickers on the inside edge of the bolt holes. I guess Wisconsin didn't learn their lesson after the 88 series, which ended up having problems with the prefixes getting in the way of month stickers.
I also have a 2008 truck plate that has the exact same problem, that the person stuck the stickers in the middle.
I have a run of four regular Wisconsin license plates... 2 I got from a garage sale, one came from an auction, and one came from my school's psychologist's friend.
Their combinations are 581-LNW, 512-LVH, 313-TVS, and 733-VLS. If you look carefully (and look at them in a straight vertical line), it looks like:
581-LNW
512-LVH
313-TVS
733-VLS
Now here's what is amazing. The first two license plates both share the same first letter and first number, 5 and L. The 2nd and 3rd license plates share the same middle letters/numbers: 1 and V. The last two share the same last letters/numbers: 3 and S. That on its own is amazing, not only from different places but also in one run of plates spanning 4 years.These are all the lines I can make with the numbers:
581-LNW
512-LVH
313-TVS
733-VLS
581-LNW
512-LVH
313-TVS
733-VLS
581-LNW
512-LVH
313-TVS
733-VLS
There are a lot of plate types in Wisconsin... that's one reason why my color cycle page probably has the most lines of code in it (around 1,500 at the moment, and it still isn't even half done yet). Here are some types of plates that I'm not sure what they are used on, or when they were first issued.
Transfer Trailer
This type of plate... I don't know when it was first issued, as I have never spotted any on any roads. The DMV website (or DOT, I never can tell the difference between the DMV and DOT) says that they are used on houses in transit... but how often does that happen? Rarely. So, there is very little research to exist on these plates. Cody James Corbett is the only collector I know about that has covered Transfer Trailer plates at all. My best estimate to when it was first issued was 2010, but again, this is just a random guess.
Every. Collector. Plate. EVER.
Collector plates would follow the same formats as passenger plates, which makes them hard to date. Collector plates I estimate were first issued around 1980, hobbyist may have been issued since 1990. Historic Military Vehicle has been issued since 2010 for sure, and Antique plates came in 1957 (I think, Andrew Turnbull said something like that.).
Special-UX and Z
Even though I have a decent collection on these plates, it still isn't exactly known when Special-UX plates were introduced; the first year known is 1957. Special-Z plates haven't been confirmed before 1967.
PSC Permits
I'm guessing these were in addition to truck plates, but there really isn't any information on these plates, so I'm not sure. I also don't know what each of the letter codes would mean; each letter code got a different color most times like insert stickers, so there is way too many color cycles to track.
In February, my family went to La Valle, Wisconsin, to get some pizza from a restaurant next to the 400 bike trail. While we were driving by the area to get there, I spotted some old abandoned trailers, and what appeared to be a green license plate on one of them.
When I was done eating my pizza, I asked my parents if I could go investigate the trailers, since they were right next to the pizza place. They let me go look, and I brought my tablet to take pictures.
When I got to the trailers, one of the trailers was painted over. The other was facing toward me, so I went up to the plate, which would have been issued early in the series of plates. Above the plate was a stack of Highway Use Tax stickers from New York; the only sticker that I could see was from 1976, but there was several stickers in that pile.
The other trailer was facing towards the road that we drove by. I went closer and found it: A 1983 Contractor semi trailer plate. It was in terrible condition; license plates from the 198s weren't exactly the most durable. The foreground paint was completely washed away, and there was off-white paint showing beneath the green paint. Mysteriously, the sticker appeared to be off-white on green, even though the sticker was suppoesd to be green on yellow. The sticker was half-gone from all the rain and debossed years.
The other trailers on the other side of the road were normal trailers. They had some orange semi plates from the late 1980s on them, so there is nothing to report there.
In case you were wondering, I was too busy to write an article on Friday, so I went and I wrote two articles.
Cranfest 2019 was the first year that I got exclusively Wisconsin license plates. I ended up getting a lot of passenger plates (21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 28, 32, 33, 34, 45), some PSC permit plates (32, 38K1), some insert truck plates with restricted use stickers (02, 04) a farm plate (35) and a mobile home plate (61).
This year was overcrowded. Like, it was such a dense crowd that I had to keep stopping every five seconds because my dad, who was hauling a wagon, was stuck in the crowd. I ended up making a beeline for the guy on Church Street, who only had 2 Illinois license plates. That was a mistake, because the person on the corner had a lot of insert truck plates that I wanted. I then went to the guy by the food court, who had what he had last year. I picked up a lot of passenger plates that I didn't have, only because they were $10 each, even though they weren't in the worst condition. Some were decent (23, 25, 28) others were rough (21, 24) others were so rusty that I wouldn't accept them for my collection (16, 18). I also found a box of older decent condition plates. I found a 23 plate for $35 that was in only slightly better condition than the 23 plate I picked up. I also ended up finding a 32, 33, and 34 plate, for between $20 and $28 each. I also picked up a PSC permit plate (32) for $25, and a moblie home (61) plate for $25. I also found a first-issue farm plate from 1935, for $45. Now, this all totals to about $200. I only had $112 on me. So this guy told me the mobile home, farm, and PSC plate was $40 total, and threw in the rest of the passenger plates for $30, for a total of just $70. I quickly picked up the plates and ran off, happy with my huge haul of 11 license plates. I came back a while later, after finding no more plates, and picked up a PSC permit plate (38), and a passenger plate (23) for another $20. I went to my other plates, then realized I didn't pick up a 26 plate. So I grabbed a 26 plate, and he said instead of $18 it would be $5.
I went through the rest of Cranfest without plates, because after the two antique booths, there were nothing but craft booths, sweatshirt booths, and cheap knockoff toy booths, ALL WITH THE SAME FAKE LOL SURPRISES. Then I stumbled upon the one booth I skipped, which just happened to have a lot of modern plates I wanted. Each plate was $6.50, even though they were mixed types and ages; some plates were farm plates from 1980, others were passenger plates from 2003.
I first went to Cranfest on September 24, 2015. Since Cranfest starts today, I thought I would write an article on my Cranfest adventures of the last 5 years.
My first Cranfest adventure started from my parents wanting to go to Cranfest. Me being me, I didn't want to go, because I had no idea what I would find. I thought it would just be a bunch of useless crafts and vintage decoration items. I ended up finding a lot of stuff. I found a whole vendor full of license plates. I thought license plates were hard to find, and that my collection would struggle to see its 10th license plate. Nowadays, if I go antique shopping, that's considered a decent shopping spree. Anyway, I ended up having no money on me, since this was never planned and was quite random with such short notice. My dad was nice enough to let me have a sticker mania disabled plate and a 2008 Michigan Great Lakes Splendor license plate. The guy that had the plates was nice enough to let me have some 1982 stickers and a 1990 truck plate. After that, we went to another vendor, who had a sticker mania farm license plate (I remember it being gray, with stickers from the 70s. Either it was a badly faded or it was a 1980's plate) and a dual purpose farm license plate. I ended up grabbing the dual purpose farm plate, since it was in better condition and the farm plate had a stand on it.
Cranfest 2016 was a better result, since I saved up $80 over the summer. I ended up getting a bunch of farm plates (61, 62, 64) and some passenger plates (62, 64, 79) in a bin of plates for $5 each or 5 for $20. The vendor didn't have those plates the next year. I also got a bunch of motorcycle plates (04 green, 06 black, 08) and truck plates (00,01)
Cranfest 2017 was even better. I ended up getting a lot of license plates that were unique, including the mystery Clinton County plate. I ended up getting a distributor plate, 2 dealer plates (91, 95), a farm plate (52), passenger plates (67), and motorcycle plates (98, 02).
Cranfest 2018 was yet another success, with me saving up $120 for Cranfest. I got over 30 license plates last year. I ended up grabbing motorcycle plates (00, 06, 08 green), passenger plates (29, 42,93(pair),98), a collector plate, a motor home pair (92), truck plates (86,98)and a dual purpose vehicle license plate. I got more out-of-state plates, but since then, my collection has concentrated on Wisconsin license plates, so I won't list them until I make pages on the plates. I know I did get some antique car plates from Arizona, Illinois, and Vermont, but I'm not working on those pages at the moment, since I've been working way too hard on my Wisconsin page.
I don't know what plates I will get this year. But, Cranfest is tomorrow, so I will report on what plates I brought home on Monday. I decided that I would update this page every Monday and Friday (I might report more if the occasion is specific enough, like if today was the day that I started collecting license plates, but in general, I will report on it when it comes time to report on my license plate collecting adventures.)
Wisconsin has issued quarterly tabs from 1941 to 1962, and stickers from 1963 to present. The thing is, Wisconsin used to use unique sticker colors, especially for June and September expirations. The thing is, though, June and September stickers haven't had much variation since 2017. Ironically, the yellow and white color palette had been picked since I started studying insert stickers in summer 2018.
Wisconsin has been using just white and yellow for June and September expirations since 2018. Unfortunately, they messed up with this predictable color palette, because they extended that color cycle to March, so if they would do the exact same color palette each year, then there would be no way to distinguish a March and September sticker. At the moment, it is impossible to identify what month a sticker is, since it is such a small text. When researching license plates on the road (don't worry, I wasn't driving), I can't tell the difference between a September 2019 and June 2020 sticker. If they use the white color scheme for BOTH March AND September 2020 stickers, there will be no way to discern between the two.
Now, the question is, what are they going to do about that?
A while ago, over the summer, I spotted a tractor plate with a white on blue sticker on it. I thought it was the weight class sticker, but I didn't see any expiration date. Was that a September 2020 sticker?
The other day, I spotted a black on pink sticker on a farm truck on a front plate. I thought it was an apportioned license plate because I got a glance at it while driving by Kwik Trip. Is that a December 2020 sticker? And why would it be registered so early? I would have to think that it would be an October sticker, since December stickers shouldn't exist yet. If it did happen to be a September sticker, then Wisconsin would be forced to not use the sticker palette for passenger vehicles for December stickers, something that hasn't happened since 1997 (or 1998, I don't know which since 1997 stickers are practically nonexistent)
I also have spotted numerous green stickers on apportioned license plates. I usually only see June insert stickers on apportioned plates, however, other websites seem to make it look like July and August stickers are super common. I guess everyone in my area of Wisconsin registers apportioned vehicles in June. Is it possible that one of the green stickers was a September sticker?
I guess I'm gonna find out sooner or later the sticker colors, since Cranfest comes up this weekend and Cranfest is always on the last weekend of September. Those September 2019 stickers are going to have to be September 2020 stickers by early next week; otherwise, they are expired plates, which would be great for my expired plates on vehicles commentary I'm gonna make sometime in the future, maybe at the end of the month?
This is a new thing to my website, where I post a commentary on license plates, whether it would be a score of license plates, a rant about current license plates, or talk about interesting license plates. There will be a new post to this section every Thursday.
Yesterday, we went to a concert in La Crosse, Wisconsin. I woke up around 10AM, only because the concert was on a Thursday, and I couldn't go to school since the concert required us to leave the house at 2:00 PM and get our stuff ready by 1:00. Anyway, we left around 2:00, and arrived at La Crosse at 3:00. We went to Polito's pizza, which just happened to be next to an antique shop. I ate my pizza, then begged my parents to let me go on a quick look at the antique shop. They let me go for 5 minutes.
I went into the antique shop, then realized that it was huge. I had no idea that I had been to this antique shop before. Maybe one day I will add pictures of the plates that I believe I got there. But, the antique shop had 3 floors, which was a lot more than I expected. I found a bunch of plates in the back of the shop, and there were a couple of pairs of 1972 Wisconsin license plates, a pair of 2001 license plates (which happened to be a sticker mania-ish license plate, but it was a double and it was $10, so I left it behind) and a pair of 1988 Wisconsin license plates. Now, I have been looking forever for 1988 license plates. I left some behind at another antique shop in La Crosse in 2015, so I really was looking for 1988 Wisconsin License plates. Then I found that pair. I quickly scooped them up, and brought them along with me while I sped-walked the entire shop. I went upstairs and found some truck plates for $4, both of which were plates I needed for my collection, a 2011 and 12 truck plate. There also were a bunch of mixed-state plates downstairs, but I was only looking for Wisconsin license plates. I went through the entire shop before my parents came looking for me, which happened to be about a minute after they came.
I did bring home the plates, only because I got lucky and my mom brought my money from mowing lawns all summer. I dropped $12 on them. I went to the concert afterwards, waiting 45 minutes for the VIP thing to start. I enjoyed the concert, the guys who were touring were joking around the entire VIP session and joked around between songs.
When there are license plates, there are imperfections. They may be as mild as a speck of dirt on the edge or as severe as a hole rusted through. Sometimes you can fix it, other times, you can't.
Also note that plate cleaning of any type is a risk and plates will be damaged in some way if you are not careful, use harsh chemicals, or have a crappy plate. I've literally just washed a plate off quickly and the ink on the sticker came off.
Rust removal
There are a lot of different ways to clean rust off of plates. There is one thing in common with most of them: They aren't foolproof. Removing rust is a very risky process, since you may end up stripping the plate of its paint.
The first way to remove rust is CLR, which is a rust cleaner. It is effective at removing rust, but may weaken the paint. What I do is grab a cotton ball, pour out some CLR onto the cotton ball, and scrub lightly until the stains are gone. It is a good idea to not do it one section at a time, as some areas will get more CLR treatment than others, leading to it deteriorating the paint more than necessary. I tried soaking a plate in a vat of CLR, and it was a disaster. First, it took way too long, and by the time it started removing rust, it was removing paint. It also was a pain to clean up, as I had to try to get it into an old soda bottle. It also wastes an entire bottle of CLR per plate.
Removing rust stains on reflective plates can be accomplished with Comet. What I'll do is grab my handy-dandy cotton ball, wet my plate, sprinkle Comet on, wait a few seconds, and scrub with the cotton ball. It works for reflective plates, but don't try it on older paint license plates, as it damages paint.
Iron Out
I have also done experiments with Iron Out. I first tried it on a 1927 Wisconsin license plate. I heard that it removes light rist stains without affecting the paint. My plate's foreground paint was thinned within minutes. Then again, the plate didn't work well with any treatments, including the CLR treatment. I decided to try it on a reflective plate. It did remove the rust stains on it, but it also dissolved the varnish, making it more vulnerable to rust again. I did three more plates, a 1923 plate, a 1934 plate, and a 1936 plate. The 1923 plate was a major improvement and the paint barely thinned at all. The 1934 plate did nothing and it damaged the paint a little. The 1936 plate was an improvement but the paint was starting to get removed so I had to stop the treatment halfway through. All in all Iron Out works if you are willing to risk paint thinning.
EvapoRust
I tried EvapoRust in February; this was also my first experiment with rust removers. I used a 1951 Wisconsin license plate (47 dated) and wrapped it in shop towels soaked with EvapoRust. It did end up removing a good amount of rust in a few hours, but by then it also stripped the number paint. Even after it was dry, the paint was still extremely brittle. It said that it wouldn't remove paint unless the paint contained oxides... either the plate had been oxidized to a paint level or the paint contained oxides.
UPDATE: I used EvapoRust on two plates, a 1933 plate and a 1934 plate, the 1933 plate had the background paint ruined, and the 1934 plate had a splotchy finish to the cleaning. I have concluded that EvapoRust is NOT a good idea for license plates.
Cleaning
Bugs and dirt can easily be removed by simply putting the plates in soapy water for a while, then scrub with a towel (or even sometimes a tissue if you really hate laundry). Just don't use hot water; doing this could ruin the varnish. If you leave a plate in water for too long the paint might start to come off or the reflective sheeting may fade from what I hear. I've left plates in the sink for hours then scratched the layer of bad paint off with my fingernail. Not a very effective or practical solution, but having a slightly faded plate is still better than an awfully stained license plate.
As a kid, I was interested in cars. In fact, in kindergarten and first grade I would pass the time on ridiculously long bus rides by naming out the car companies of the cars that would drive by the bus.
At that time I was not paying attention to the license plates.
After many years, that car interest faded. After that, in 2012, I started to get an interest in license plate stickers. I must have gotten interested on all of the sticker colors and their replacement cycles. I also loved those "sticker mania" license plates, where people oppose the general recommendation of one neat sticker stack by sticking stickers all over the license plate to the point that the slogan, state, and sometimes even parts of the serial get covered up.
In some winter around that time, I was wondering what my dad's license plate would look like with a 2012 sticker on it. So being the dumb moron I am I peeled back the sticker to see a little bit of the sticker and then the sticker cleanly popped off. My dad was not happy, and wedged the sticker between the license plate and the car until we got home. He then stuck the sticker back on with packing tape and when it came time to replace the sticker he scratched the rest of the stickers off. I found the 2013 sticker on the ground and peeled it off of the tape and kept it. I stuck it and some pieces of other stickers on a blank plate, 985-BZX. I later took the stickers off and only kept the 2013 sticker, and since 2016 or so it's been sitting taped by my window. Ever since then my dad doesn't trust me around our license plate.
I got my first license plate around May or June 2012. It came from my grandfather, who also supplied me with 3 more license plates later on. The license plate was a normal black Wisconsin license plate, and the hologram said March 2002 on it. I (thought) I remembered the license plate being on his car when I was very little, probably less than 4 years old. I looked the plate up on the DMV inquiry tool and it came up with a car I don't know at all, completely different color. The other stickered plate still hasn't been found. The other plates were more regular black license plates, a numeric truck plate, and a bicycle license plate from 1979. I also gained a pair of motor home license plates from 2012. They had just expired a few months before I got them. They were in surprisingly good condition, just having some candy on them and being bent slightly. I liked the fact that the stickers were on them, and I attempted to peel off the stickers to see what was underneath. I gave up after it just started crumbling on the corner, and I'm glad the stickers didn't just come off cleanly.
In 2013 I put my license plate collection in my TV stand and quit collecting because of my OCD.
On September 23, 2015, my mom made me clean out my TV stand. I finally did, finding my old license plate collection. I decided to continue collecting license plates after that. I didn't expect to get many more license plates, since there is only so many license plates that my family and friends have. I was actually surprised when I reached my 50th license plate in less than a year.
The next day, on September 24, 2015, we went to Cranfest. I actually didn't want to go at the time, because I didn't know what actually would be there. I wasn't expecting there to be license plates there. I didn't have any money at that time. But when we were there, I found boxfuls of license plates. They were $2 each. One box had some out-of-state license plates, and those were $5 each. I was able to get a $2 license plate and a $5 license plate, as well as a free $2 license plate and some $2 unused license plate stickers. I found another vendor with lots of plates. Those were also $2. I got one of those. There was a sticker mania farm license plate I wanted. It was in rough shape and it had a stand attatched to it, so I got a dual purpose farm license plate.
After that, in November 2015, I went antique shopping and I found many boxfuls of license plates. I blew $40 on license plates I was saving up to buy a new TV. UPDATE: In March 2018 I bought an Xbox one, which only had HDMI so I had to buy a new TV for my birthday.
I asked for license plates for Christmas that year. I got one for Christmas, but just before Christmas I got a lot of old license plates, including a 1921 New York license plate. I also went antique shopping during that time, gaining a lot of license plates.
After that, in January 2016, I dropped $35 on this:
In April 2016, I started my Illinois run.
After just 7 months, I got my 50th license plate. And 4 months later, I got my 100th license plate. 2 months later I reached 150 license plates, and 5 months later I got my 200th license plate. I now estimate that my license plate collection has between 380 and 400 license plates.
I am now a member of the ALPCA. My collection keeps growing rapidly. I have gotten an average of a license plate every 3 days.
If you made it this far, either you scrolled to see the TOS, or you actually read the whole page. If the situation is the latter, then thanks for appreciating my website enough to read everything.
