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A little while back, our California Dept. of Motor Vehicles offered up one of the coolest ideas they could have for the owners of "classic" vehicles: The re-issuance of older license-plate styles/colors, to replace whatever newer ones you might have and help get your total vehicle appearance right. There were three common original types to be available: yellow w/ black for '56-63, black w/ yellow for '63-'70, and blue w/ yellow for '70 up into the eighties. They needed pre-orders (at $50) to start...they wouldn't run any of each style until reaching qty. 7500.
We put some thought into that as I'd love to have a pair of yellow/blacks for our '59 Chevy, it had been switched to the '63-up style when those came out as that was mandatory at the time and the originals were lost forever.
Ultimately we decided on "no", preferring to keep it "not-quite-original legit", rather than original-looking reproduction, and didn't really pay any more attention to that program although I still thought it was a great idea.
Well it didn't matter for us as they never got enough orders for our needed style anyway, but they did reach the threshold for the '63-'70 black/yellow.
Those have been out now and here's the first ones I've seen, on Craigslist from a guy who evidently ordered up a few pairs with whatever available interesting number/letter combinations he could get and is looking to re-sell to the right guy for $100, making a handy $50 each. OK, hey I'm all for entrepreneurism...
But if we had bought a pair of these from the DMV with the thought it would make our car look like it had original plates, we'd be pretty disappointed. The Black is there, the yellow seems to be right, but the style of lettering is so far off it looks like they've intentionally tried to make them look wrong:
Have a look at the "S". An "S" is an S, right? Not really. Compare with an original below:
Seems anal to gripe about, unless you're the type of car guy who'd go to the trouble to get such an item as this and are kinda detail-oriented. The letter style (font if you will) is a mile off and looks like a total fake. The "I" is way-wrong also (originals didn't have the horizontal lines top-and-bottom), and there are probably other letters that are different. Furthermore, the guy setting the dies could have been instructed by his supervisor to maybe try to center the characters on the part. That's just sloppy.
The cheapest Chinese counterfeit watch makers do a better job than this..again, to be that far off the DMV would have had to do it on purpose. Why? If they wanted to make some details differentiate their re-pops from originals (hard to imagine, as some characters are more true to original and certain plates might just-happen to have only those and would thus look right) they could have at least made it more subtle, such as using aluminum instead of original steel which without having handled one I'm imagining they also did.
We know of-course that "vanity" plates weren't available in the sixties anyhow, but if you're one of the guys who stepped up for this and used original-type series letters/numbers to make it look legit, just know the DMV wasn't exactly behind you on that. Sorry about the $50.
We put some thought into that as I'd love to have a pair of yellow/blacks for our '59 Chevy, it had been switched to the '63-up style when those came out as that was mandatory at the time and the originals were lost forever.
Ultimately we decided on "no", preferring to keep it "not-quite-original legit", rather than original-looking reproduction, and didn't really pay any more attention to that program although I still thought it was a great idea.
Well it didn't matter for us as they never got enough orders for our needed style anyway, but they did reach the threshold for the '63-'70 black/yellow.
Those have been out now and here's the first ones I've seen, on Craigslist from a guy who evidently ordered up a few pairs with whatever available interesting number/letter combinations he could get and is looking to re-sell to the right guy for $100, making a handy $50 each. OK, hey I'm all for entrepreneurism...
But if we had bought a pair of these from the DMV with the thought it would make our car look like it had original plates, we'd be pretty disappointed. The Black is there, the yellow seems to be right, but the style of lettering is so far off it looks like they've intentionally tried to make them look wrong:
Have a look at the "S". An "S" is an S, right? Not really. Compare with an original below:
Seems anal to gripe about, unless you're the type of car guy who'd go to the trouble to get such an item as this and are kinda detail-oriented. The letter style (font if you will) is a mile off and looks like a total fake. The "I" is way-wrong also (originals didn't have the horizontal lines top-and-bottom), and there are probably other letters that are different. Furthermore, the guy setting the dies could have been instructed by his supervisor to maybe try to center the characters on the part. That's just sloppy.
The cheapest Chinese counterfeit watch makers do a better job than this..again, to be that far off the DMV would have had to do it on purpose. Why? If they wanted to make some details differentiate their re-pops from originals (hard to imagine, as some characters are more true to original and certain plates might just-happen to have only those and would thus look right) they could have at least made it more subtle, such as using aluminum instead of original steel which without having handled one I'm imagining they also did.
We know of-course that "vanity" plates weren't available in the sixties anyhow, but if you're one of the guys who stepped up for this and used original-type series letters/numbers to make it look legit, just know the DMV wasn't exactly behind you on that. Sorry about the $50.
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