Another American name plate

It’s been a while since a decent American vanity plate made an appearance, and when this ‘1’ plate came into focus, I grabbed it, hoping the unfamiliar grouping of letter would mean something useable.

It did indeed turn out to be a name, Dayekh, and has a variety of meanings, or interpretations: Mankind, Great Lover, Optimistic, and probably more, depending on where you look.

The car suggests the owner is not short of a penny or two. Seemingly a visitor to Pennsylvania (can’t read the small print) too, as no searches found the plate online, so no info to add.

Nice use of American ‘Vanity Plate’

There are a lot of American vanity plates I might want to give a mention, but since they are created by the owner’s using any available combination of characters, they’re often just too crude. Seems that those working in the US DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) are NOT recruited for their imagination, and let almost anything through, even though the rules should catch them. It’s not unheard of for someone who managed to get such plates to have them cancelled and recalled – when someone eventually realised what the characters can be read as.

I do have a useable example, but filed it away too safely, so will have to find it again.

This one is not in that group, and is just a nice and tidy advert/promo for a business.

We do get a few like this here, but the choices are more limited, as we don’t get a choice of letters. Probably most often seen on lorries, where the owner’s or business name has a series of plates on their fleet that match their initials.

The Spider-Man plate

Looks like someone in the US noticed my ‘return’, and new blog theme, and pointed a camera at this cure vanity plate for me.

Still more a fan of the original comic Spider-Man than later ‘reimaginings’ or films, I had to think of J Jonah Jameson when this one appeared :-)

There haven’t been any good ones recently, although I have a few in backlog that I should dump down to clear off.

1982 Mercedes-Benz is 82BENZ

Remember 1988 Mercedes-Benz SL IS 1988 SL?

Well, it looks as if an American Mercedes=Benz SL owner had the same thought…

82 BENZ

I was running a series of ‘Spooky Coincidence’ posts at one point, but gave it up as I thought I was just being silly.

But, what the chance of me posting the first ‘1988 SL’ car and plate… then coming across the near identical pic on the side of the world a few weeks later?

Doubly incredible pic

Not only that, but this car is parked in a disabled parking bay.

AND is being driven by a disabled driver (or at least a disabled badge holder).

What is the chance of that?

I should add, NOT my opinion or thought there, but to look at some who post pics online on ‘social media’ sites, you could be forgiven for thinking a disabled badge holder has not been seen parking in such a place since the dawn of time.

It’s a RUFF JOB

But somebody’s got to do it :-)

Continuing my series of American vanity plates spotted online – this gem appeared in an online gallery of pics.

Don’t why it should be so, but when I tried to access their website (curious to see who pays for any poop scooping they get called in to do) – all I got was a message stating access from GB was NOT allowed. And I did try alternative browsers, but couldn’t be bothered firing up a VPN.

Suburban Scoopers Ruff Job

Another intriguing US vanity plate

Every time I think I’m not going to see another one – there it is!

I’m not even looking for them now, and I seem to see them better than at times when I go looking.

I suppose the real mystery is just what this one means.

It could be quite different here (Scotland), but then again, this plate is NOT in Scotland.

ORANGMN Vanity Plate

Do you think the driver is an ‘Orange Cult Member’?

Being a fan/MAGAT and Trump supporter might not be such a good idea, as the case, sorry CASES, against him seem to be coming together.

It’s worth noting I almost missed this one as I was looking at the one in front – the one with the cardboard over the plate.

Maybe that driver is his pal, but thinks they’re safer covering a similar plate!

 

Another American plate – this must be their day

Someone like the plates I’ve noted – guess they decided to gift me this piece of fun.

Don’t know anything about it though.

At least it’s ‘safe’, and not likely to be confiscated.

Vanity Plate 1EARUP

It must be bad number plate day

After the example I moaned about in the previous post…

I learned of an American vanity plate that was spotted by the authorities, upset them, and was reportedly confiscated from the naughty owner.

Enjoy working out the problem with this one :o

Confiscated American Vanity Plate

Spotted an ‘old style’ American vanity plate

While I may not be in America, I’ve been intrigued by their ‘vanity plate’ system for years – although I’ve never really looked at the rules, probably because the details will never matter to me.

One tale that almost stuck in what passes loosely for my mind dates way back to the days when the IBM PC (and clones) were coming on to the market.

Seems there was a guy who was pretty good at troubleshooting all kinds of software, firmware, and all things code related. Rather than take a salaried job with a big company, it’s said he made a small fortune by staying freelance, and negotiating a fee for every job he took on.

Sadly, this tale’s buried so far back I can no longer remember the plate, but according to the story, he got his jobs just by cruising the roads along Silicon Valley in his car, which had plates which related to his coding skill – any of the businesses there who knew him by reputation just sent somebody out to watch for him, and flag him down.

I can’t speak for the veracity of the story now, but I’m sure it was backed up by his name and business details back in the days when I first read of him.

I tend to think of that sort of plate as an ‘old style’ one, based on something tangible – as opposed to the novelty or insulting/derogatory types which are more common today.

I spotted this one, which I think is in keeping with the ‘old style’.

Hopefully, it shows up well enough in this grab. This one suffered from the motion blurring and I had to take quite a few grabs until I could read enough of the letters to make sense, then go back for this frame, which isn’t too bad.

The car is a 2009 Cadillac CTS (MSRP $36 k).

Plate is in the clear in the caption – hopefully not in need of interpretation (unlike some of the dreadful UK efforts where numbers have to be convoluted into letters using drug induced imagination).

Cadillac CTS I-ERNDIS

American vanity plate raised from video

Although they’re not the same as our cherished registrations, it’s still interesting to spot American vanity plates, something I’ve been playing at with some relatively decent res video.

Unfortunately, a combination of motion blurring and upload rendering (and who knows what else) mean that detail can often be lost/lacking – not a great help when trying to read number plates.

It’s taken a while to raise this one from the much, partly because some of the letters looked like others and led me astray until I realised how wrong I was after the first glimpse – it can be hard to change perceptions once a possible interpretation get lodged in your head – you really do have to work to ‘unsee’ it.

Because of that, I don’t know how obvious, or not, this one is in this ‘best’ enhancement of the video grab.

I’ve added the final guess (better call it that since it is the best obtained from enhancing the plate) after the pic, so you can have a guess before looking.

Chevy plate

It’s funny seeing it now that the original unenhanced version of this image has been forgotten, or unseen.

With that out of my head, the correct interpretation looks blatantly obvious.

But then again, the original grab was nowhere near as clear or distinct, with the edges of the letters considerably more blurred and smooched out.

Not helped by any of the missing or distorted strokes either.

In fact, it was a real pig to read after looking as if it was in the clear, and easy to see,

Got it?

I changed the text colour to yellow, in case a glance gave it away – if it’s hard to read, just select the line below, and it should be legible.

BLAMONT

I really should read up on American plates

I’ve posted a few US vanity plates recently, as I spot them in some ‘almost but not quite’ live videos I watch.

While I know their system is nothing like ours (UK), I’ve no idea if the plates have any value.

For example, I just noted that DEV 1L sold for (I suggest you sit down before proceeding, if unfamiliar with these sales) – £308,253.

Similarly, large numbers can be approached with low numbers as well.

Glasgow used to have G 0 on the Lord Provost’s Rolls, until it had to go (old and unreliable – the Rolls, now in the transport museum, not the LP, they get replaced regularly).

Our system doesn’t allow for a plate like the following, which I just caught – but it would be pricey if we did!

As noted, I really should go read the American rules.

Although I know words were generally allowed, and these could include letters not permitted in our system, I had no idea that something like a single digit number would be available.

The closest we get is two characters, a letter with a number, of which I see a few occasionally – surprisingly more often than might be expected.

I mentioned this to someone further up the ‘Pay Grade Scale’ than I ever was, and they told me most of them were (back then at least) owned by one Glasgow family, who they hinted also owned most of Glasgow.

Sad to say, they couldn’t be persuaded to back that up, or spill any details, so I have no idea if it was true, or I was just being wound up.

Ford Explorer 3