Auction of beautiful license plates

After the auction, the beautiful license plate will be almost "nailed" to the car owner and not permanently attached to a car like it is now (illustrative photo)

Of the more than 150,000 license plates expected to be auctioned in the first round, Hai Duong has more than 3,400. In this round, the five-digit license plates from 111.11 to 999.99, and then the progressive license plates all appeared, but not all provinces and cities have them.

Liking beautiful license plates is a common mentality in Vietnam. As long as a vehicle has a license plate, many people pay attention to whether the license plate is beautiful or ugly, whether it is a motorbike or a car. There are many different concepts about beautiful license plates. License plates with four of a kind, five of a kind, progressive numbers... are often considered beautiful license plates. Traditional number players consider license plates with a sum ending in 9 or 10 to be beautiful. Some people look at beautiful license plates based on "phonetic transcription" such as 4078 means "four seasons without failure", "6789" means "level everything"... Progressive license plates, meaning the next number is higher than the previous number, meaning continuous advancement, a happy ending, fulfillment and happiness, are also especially popular, second only to the five of a kind license plates.

Before the license plate auction, the license plate market was quite bustling. As soon as there was information about someone getting a nice license plate, people would immediately ask to buy it. The nicer the license plate and the more expensive the car, the higher the price.

Recently, the image of the luxury car BMW X5 2023 with license plate 34A-56789 has been shared by many people on social networks and some online newspapers. People are excited and amazed because this license plate means "unstoppable progress". What's more special is that the "progressive" series of numbers are all from 5 to 9 combined with the license plate code 34 to create a "dragon series" of numbers from 3 to 9. The owner of the car did not transfer it, so it is not clear how much this license plate can be sold for, but it is certainly not a small amount. Because in reality, many cars with beautiful license plates have been paid for, sometimes equal to the price of the car, even several times more. For example, in January 2023, the Toyota Corolla Cross SUV "won" the beautiful license plate 30H-56789 and was immediately put up for sale by a luxury car showroom in Hanoi for up to 2.6 billion VND while the listed price of this car model is from 720 million VND...

Because of the psychology of liking beautiful license plates, the market for beautiful license plates was once very vibrant. There was even a story of two cars with the same license plate number down to the "millimeter". This raises questions about the transparency in the issuance of license plates.

This situation will be ended when implementing the policy of auctioning license plates on the internet environment to increase transparency. The public license plates will limit profiteering and contribute to increasing budget revenue.

The Traffic Police Department has publicly posted the list of license plates up for auction in the first round on the online auction website. At the first round, the Traffic Police Department approved a list of 153,102 car license plates from 63 provinces and cities to be auctioned. The car license plates are distributed according to the following categories: cars, passenger cars, trucks and vans.

People participating in the auction will be given an access account, instructions on how to use the account, how to bid and other content on the online auction information page. After choosing the license plate to bid, the participant submits the application fee, deposit into the account of the property auction organization and is given an auction participation code.

According to many people, the number plates in the first auction of Hai Duong do not have many beautiful plates. Many people also commented that these plates do not need to be auctioned, they can go and stamp the number plates themselves, which is even more beautiful... However, with this auction, people and organizations can participate in the auction of number plates of all localities, without being limited by permanent address or headquarters. Therefore, those who like to hunt for beautiful plates will not be limited. It will not be surprising that there will be more cars with five-of-a-kind, "progressive" number plates... appearing in Hai Duong.

KIM THANH