Old Number plate question....can you help?!

[WhiteGTI]

Basically found some old family videos the other day from the 1950's, which showed the number plates that my grandfather used to have on his old cars.

Looked on the motor insurance database and they are not currently registered to a vehicle.

Looked on the likes of New Reg/DVLA personalised registrations and they are not currently for sale.

So I rung up the DVLA personalised registrations department and asked if i could buy the number plate in question. The lady took the plate details, then came back to me and said that unless i owned the car that the number plate is on then i couldn't buy the plate. I tried to tell her that this was previously on a car from the 1950's, and that it is not currently on any car at the moment. She told me that basically the plate has been lost in history lol!

I find this a little stupid! Here I am, a customer willing to pay for a number plate that is not currently in use, and they don't want to take the money for it! They said that they can't make the number plate up again simply because I do not have the car that it was previously registered with. The likelihood is that that car is not even in existence anymore! The lady did say something about the DVLA not owning the plates or something, so i wondered if it was another organisation that i needed to speak to?

Does anyone have any experience of this?? 

[tony_danza]

Very tricky, the plate still belongs to the car, even if the car no longer exists. Probably went missing before all the scrapping/export process on the V5 was introduced?

Someone I know resurrected an old Jag to get the plate off that, had to be MOT'd & re-registered basically.

[DaveB@Vagbremtechnic]

Yep thats the only way really, if you were really unscrupulous and were planning on acting illegally. You'd end up having to buy some spare parts from the same model vehicle you family had in the 50's and make the case that this is indeed your car.

Its about building a case to say that in effect its a barn find and the car was forgotten about, if the vehicles provenance is not going to get called into question i.e. theres no chance of two of them being on the road at te same time then theres some guidance on the DVLA website about which bits you need to make the case, the engine and gearbox give a number of points as do axles and other parts - when you have enough points you can apply for a log book.

[joesgti]

what was the plate out of interest?

[WhiteGTI]

It was three numbers followed by three letters. You want to know the actual plate Joe?