Bumper Bytes

At the Lake Mirror Classic Concours & Car Show held today in Lakeland, FL, ‘Wilbur’ was awarded Best in Show – Trucks!!…as many of you know, he is the show vehicle of Great American Plates, with many of the attendees commenting on his 1931 Florida for Health front license plate!…in place of the Plate Princess’s […] read more
Over the years we’ve been fortunate to have had a number of very nice collections of license plates offered to us…and recently a collection with real ‘local color’ was made available to GAP…the Johnston brothers, Philip and Henry, now living in Thomaston, GA contacted us to review about 50 plates that had hung in a […] read more
This is the first time for Hawaii to win this award. The Plate was originally proposed in 2020 to be limited to Electric Vehicles since members of the PVS were also concerned about the environment, but that limitation was quickly dropped as the demand for the plate was great among all motorists, which also generated […] read more
After an 1,850 mile drive across our beautiful country just before the Fourth of July Weekend, the Plate Princess and I arrived in Denver, Colorado for the 2023 Automobile License Plate Collectors’ International Convention…another 450 or so collectors joined us for an enjoyable four day meet…lots of plates to buy, sell, or trade, and plenty of […] read more
…late last year Roger Furman found a 1958 Illinois plate on the Great American Plates website and bought it to mount on his wife’s gorgeous 1958 T-Bird…instead, for the past six months or so, she had hung on display in their house!…she finally had Roger lovingly install it on her chariot!…you ‘da man, Roger!… read more
At the 2023 ALPCA license plate convention in Denver this year, our friend, Chris Fretta, found a real treasure…in the early 1900s,  license plates were made with steel bases covered with porcelain to assure their long life…one of the most well-known manufacturers was the Ingram-Richardson Manufacturing Company…as seen on the 1915 California plate’s backside, their company […] read more
Patience is a virtue, but sometimes good luck plays a role as well…at the 2023 ALPCA convention in Denver this week, we were happy to meet up with Eric Tanner, the current Editor of PLATES magazine (yes, we have our own license plate collectors’ magazine!)…in previous issues, Eric had done a few articles mentioning the DC license […] read more
With a beautiful morning sunrise as my guide, east-bound to Vero Beach was a pleasant journey, for sure…particularly as a complete collection of 150 Wisconsin license plates awaited my arrival at the home of Jack Lucas, former owner and barkeep of the Village Pump in Solon Springs, Wisconsin…while we can’t attest to the cuisine at […] read more
…we made it!!…what’s another 750 mile joy ride with the Plate Princess to wheel and deal more license plates?!…the annual ALPCA license plate collectors convention this year is in Hampton, VA…so we loaded up about 10,000 license plates in Lakeland Sunday morning and made it here in time for dinner last night!…I keep reminding her […] read more
…a few days ago we got an email from a gentleman who wanted to know if he could ‘stop by’ and pick up a few plates on the drive he and his wife were making from St. Augustine to St. Petersburg…apparently they were vacationing from Ireland (again!) and wanted to add to the collection of […] read more
In early April, as Spring was springing and we were shaking off some of the Covid-crazies, we received an email from Cynthia Kindgren in Rockford, Illinois…she asked if we’d be interested in her recently-deceased brother’s collection of taxi cab license plates…over the years we’ve had several folks describe their available collections to us, including military, […] read more
We recently provided Linda Speetzen with a 1940 California plate to complete her family’s game room decorations…she, her husband, and their two sons each have a license plate mounted from the state in which they were born and their year of birth…all celebrate California except the younger son, born in Schenectady, NY!…while the older son […] read more