@ sixes & sevens

The Wax Plate Museum

I HAVE BEEN MULLING OVER reviving my blog posts lately, but this idea was so spectacular that it rose to the top instantly.

I was trawling eBay for vintage photographs when I came across this item depicting the automobile Mexican president Obregon was riding in when an assassination attempt was made on him. It includes a partial of the license plate, a Distrito Federal plate from 1927. I was commenting to Kiki on how frustrating it was the entire plate wasn't in the photo.

Kiki's reply was that I should open a museum with replicas of famous license plates -- a "Wax Plate Museum." I could include plates from famous vehicle accidents, like James Dean's or, she added waggishly, Abraham Lincoln. I mentioned Isadora Duncan and lamented that it might be difficult to find out what the plate number was on her car. Kiki said, "Hey, they're already reproductions." Once you start thinking about this -- Albert Camus and Jayne Mansfield and Harry Chapin and Princess Grace and either of the Allman Brothers come to mind -- the possibilities seem endless.

As it happens, replica plates of the Porsche Spyder Dean was driving pop up constantly on eBay (see above). As far as I know it's the only one of its kind, so there's plenty of opportunity out there.

New York doctor (blue base variant)

New York doctor (blue base variant)
 

Some of my plate collecting friends think me some kind of expert on New York State license plates. And I'll admit I know a fair amount about them, still far short of being an expert. The plate above proves the point.

Among the many types of plates handed out in New York State to professional employees is the doctor or 'MD' plate. New York has issued plates for doctors officially since 1939 and probably unofficially for a few years before that. The 'blue base' like the one above was issued between 1966 and 1973. By 1966 there a lot of doctor plates being issued. Until 1966 most base plates were valid for one or two years. The blue base was the first to stay on the road for seven years.

In order to accommodate the demand of the multi-year plate, several numbering systems were used:

• MD prefix (MD-1234)
• MD suffix (1234-MD)
• MD infix (2MD-345, 12MD-34 and 123MD-4)

We know this to be the types issued because the New York Department of Motor Vehicles published lists of all plates issued and their county of issue. The last known list issued during this period, dated 1971, has the registration 825MD-9 as the highest issued in the MD sequence. It would be easy to assume that this sequence would continue to its natural end, 999MD-9 and still provide enough plates. What's more, all the plates from 100MD-1 up are identified in the list simply as "Albany Surplus".

That would be the end of the story, a fairly dull one at that, were it not for the plate that came up on eBay and that I nabbed (for a penny, by the way: there are still 'bargains' to be had).

It's done!

365.017
Originally uploaded by sixes & sevens

As far as I can tell, the bulk of the license plate collection is now posted to flickr. Yippee! I still have some little odds and ends to add, mostly plates from outside North America. I hope to get to those at leisure. The timing couldn't have been better. What with Kiki moving back to the apartment next week, it's best that I don't have all these plates kicking around underfoot in the bedroom.

For those who are curious, I uploaded my first photo on August 26, 2007 ... a mere 258 days ago. I don't know exactly how many photographs that entails, but there are approximately 1,200.

Massachusetts license plates

Massachusetts antique auto
Originally uploaded by sixes & sevens

Earlier this week I was chatting with my friend and colleague Dan about my 1956 license plate photo documentation project. He made a bid for my doing Massachusetts next, a suggestion I was glad to take up: I have no particular order in mind for adding states to the collection. Besides, unlike some states Massachusetts actually had interesting plates in 1956.

The decision was made easier when Dan had to dash up to the Cape to be with his dad during emergency surgery and recovery. I've never met his dad; and this peculiar little project of mine is insignificant compared to family and health. But I'm happy to dedicate this set of plate photos to Daniel Senior, his complete recovery, and to a Christmas surrounded, rightly so, by his family.

What's going on here?

New Mexico 'zia'
Originally uploaded by sixes & sevens

Anyone who's been watching my flickr site lately can't have missed the proliferation of license plate mug shots going up nearly every weekend. I admit that to all but a handful of fellow plate collectors and those with a slightly off-kilter set of interests, it must be pretty tedious work clicking through them all.

Well, it's a multi-fold exercise for me: Mastering the 'art' of license plate photography and managing photos on flickr (okay, I pretty much have these down already); creating a visual inventory of my collection, one against which I can judge those things I'm offered or find on eBay; sharing what I know about the license plates I'm illustrating; scaring up some of the types I'm missing from other collectors; and probably a thing or two I can't remember right now.

The only down side so far has been the disorder that comes of pulling all my plates out of hiding. They don't seem to get back quite the same way. Or at all.

My plate meet find

 

I went today to the nearest license plate collectors' meet in Milford, Connecticut. These meets always require me to get up before the sun, which wouldn't normally be my choice on a Saturday morning. Compound this with the likelihood that I wouldn't find much new 'tin' worth adding to my collection, and you get an idea of how low my expectations are.

I haven't been going regularly to meets lately -- a combination of counter scheduling and the certainty that the meet will be held somewhere impossible to reach without a car or a ride. (Check out Webster, Massachusetts, on a map sometime if you want a definition of 'middle of nowhere'.) Thanks for the ride, Roger! For that reason it was nice to catch up with some of my plate collecting pals to catch up: to tell our equivalent of big fish stories, to share recent 'finds', to complain about fellow collectors, the DMV, or the state of the hobby.

So it was great to run into one longstanding collector-friend only to learn that he'd been holding onto a plate with me in mind for months. (My collection is in its way so esoteric that fellow collectors have begun to think of me when they spot a plate they wouldn't otherwise be interested in.) He reached into his briefcase and produced the plate illustrated above.

A few words of explanation. Between 1955 and 1988 the New York State Thruway Authority issued small permit plates to motorists on payment of an annual fee. Apart from the first year, only the letters "TWY" indicated the jurisdiction and purpose of the plates. Regular plates were all numeric. A small number of plates were issued sequentially to state judges and elected officials. An even smaller number of plates were issued to state-wide officeholders. These feature the only the appropriate legend, including GOVERNOR, LIEUT. GOVERNOR, ATTY. GENERAL, and COMPTROLLER. I was being offered the attorney general's plate for my birth year, the second year of issue. Wow.

I didn't need any encouragement to add this plate, which fills both my 1956 collection and my much smaller New York State collection. I figured that it was undoubtedly issued to some little known political hack in a Republican administration. I was wrong on both counts. The governor at the time was Democrat W. Averell Harriman. And his attorney general at the time was Jacob Javits.

I'll let his biography speak for itself. He was my first introduction (apart from my mother) to the concept of a Liberal Republican. (Would there were more of them today.) He was senator when I moved to New York from California in 1969; served alongside both Robert F. Kennedy and James Buckley, the poster child for the other wing of the Republican Party; and was defeated in a later primary by Alphonse D'Amato, about whom the less said the better.

So for both me and certainly for many others, he was far from a nobody. And I get to own one of his license plates. Pretty cool.

The beginning of scanner mania?

Over Christmas I mentioned to my brother Doug, quite as an aside, that I could really use a scanner to embark on the illustration of my definitive history of New York State automobile license plates. He said he had spare scanners, would I like to take one back to New York? Why sure, I answered, if you're offering. So I lugged (not really; it's incredibly lightweight) the scanner back and this evening loaded all the necessary -- and not doubt lots of unnecessary -- software. As a test I popped a recently acquired real photo postcard (RPPC) into the scanner and ... Presto!

The 300 dpi original scan is truly magnificent and, trust me, a high enough quality for my purposes. I reduced it and converted it into a jpeg for this post, otherwise the detail would blow you away.

Elnora is just a little ways outside of Schenectady. The New York plate in the photograph dates from 1913; the postcard was postmarked May 24, 1915. I can't make out the make of the automobile -- even the original isn't detailed enough for that.

The earliest JSC plate?

I was holding my breath til this auction ended. And until the package arrived in the mail.

But as far as I know this 1934 example is the earliest JSC plate produced. I could be wrong, and I'd be delighted to be proved wrong -- as long as I could add that earlier plate to my collection. This is actually one of a pair of '34 JSC plates, each with a hole strategically drilled through the face. But since this is only one of two numbers from 1934 reported to have survived (and I'd like to see the other just to be sure), I'm not complaining.

For display only

At every plate meet there are plates that make the collector salivate but which are only for show. The T-7 plate above was that was on Gary Smith's table is a case in point.

The plate grabs the enthusiast-collector's attention in part for the low number and the offset embossing. That at least was what caught my attention. But the story attached makes this modest plate even more compelling.

On the back of the plate is the handwritten comment

T-9 Samples for Week of Nov. 20th 1972

Hmmm. Weren't the orange base plates first issued to the public in January of 1973? If the note is genuine (and Gary suggests that his source for the plate and the story is to be believed) this is one of nine test plates made in anticipation of the general release of the orange base plates.

Gary tells a kicker to the original story. He of course asked the seller whether there were others from this test run that he might want to sell. Oh, yeah, of course, he'd get back to Gary. But alas, no other plates were forthcoming. To our knowledge this is the only surviving test plate.

Yorktown Heights meet

Just got back from the Yorktown Heights plate meet (thanks, Walt and Roy). I think it's the first meet I've gone to since the same meet last year. How did that happen?

These days there aren't very many plates for sale that I either want or can afford. The one pictured above certainly qualifies as the former and debatably the latter. It's mine now. The plate is a so-called 'pre-state' New York plate. In this instance 'pre-state' means one produced before the state assumed responsibility for the manufacture and distribution of license plates.

Not all states had pre-state plates, and the years of issue vary from state to state. The pre-state era in New York lasted from April 1901, when New York State first required owners to register their automobiles, to August of 1910.  The state would issue a certificate to the owner, who would be responsible for procuring a plate to display on the vehicle. For the first two years the owner used his initials on the plate. (See the inset picture at the left, courtesy of the ALPCA website.) This quickly became confusing, so in 1903 the state began numbering the registrations, retroactively numbering the certificates issued since 1901. The numbering is continuous from 1901 through 1910. The highest numbered certificate, issued July 31, 1910, was 108401. (Considering how briefly the certificate was valid, you wonder if a plate was ever made.)

I have been looking to add a prestate to my passenger run, preferring (I thought) to find an early, low-numbered plate. Then I spied this six-digit example. The first six-digit plate (100000) was probably issued in April 1910; the one I bought was probably issued in June. The majority of surviving prestate plates are five-digit plates. So why not acquire this 'scarce' if relatively recent example?

The plate is typical of one variety of 'kit' plate -- plates assembled from standard commercially-ordered materials.