CA to Reissue Black Plates

[Jim S.]

Re: CA to Reissue Black Plates

California has always allowed you to take old black plates and reassign them to a newer car. The old plates had a date stamped on them where the year sticker goes.
For example: my 63's back licence plate looks just like one of the new ones will, but the front plate, where there is no month and year sticker has a "63" stamped in it.
So, the new plate will look good, but it is still nice to try to find originals with a date on them.

If they use the same tooling , it may still say that .

Jim

[Jim D.]

Re: CA to Reissue Black Plates

My 65 still wears its original Ca. plates and believe it or not, they're in flawless condition. Hard to imagine they survived all these years without even a rock chip/dent in the front plate.

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[Dan D.]

Re: CA to Reissue Black Plates

States have found "special interest" and "vanity" plates to be a great source of revenue. I'm not positive but I think in Pennsylvania, all you need is 50 people and you can get a special plate made. As far as "vanity plates", for the extra fee, you can get anything you want. The plate on my '72 convertible is, "72 4SPD."

[Douglas L.]

Re: CA to Reissue Black Plates

California has always allowed you to take old black plates and reassign them to a newer car. The old plates had a date stamped on them where the year sticker goes.
For example: my 63's back licence plate looks just like one of the new ones will, but the front plate, where there is no month and year sticker has a "63" stamped in it.
So, the new plate will look good, but it is still nice to try to find originals with a date on them.

Just a bit more info on this subject. I've done the YOM plate program a few times. All yellow on black plates have 63 stamped on them as 63 was the first year California issued them. If you are going to assign the plates to a 63 car you will not need a year sticker but if you want to assign those plates to 64 and up car you will need a appropriate year tag (65 tag for a 65, 68 tag for a 68 car etc). Luckily the year tags are reproduced(theres always a few guys at Pomona swap meet selling them). Also, the DMV will give you new month tag when you assign the plates to your car, they look different than the old ones but once again, the old style ones are also reproduced.

The upside to the YOM program is that its a one time fee because the plates arent considered vanity plates and I'd be willing to bet the new plates from the DMV will be considered vanity and will have a extra fee charged every year. Down side is that the old plates dont look as nice as new plates and good, clear pairs are getting expensive.

[Monte M.]

Re: CA to Reissue Black Plates

Doug,
I am not sure what you me by not needing a year sticker. Here in California we get a new "year" sticker every year when we pay for our registration. That tells anyone looking at it that the registration is up to date.

Other states issue plates every year, from what I hear. My car came from Michigan. It had a plate on it "63 SPLT" as the plate number, but in the lower corner there is an "82" stamped and painted in the plate. My guess was they had to get new plates every year. Unlike CA where we just keep our plates and put a new tear sticker on each year.

Years ago there was a book that broke down the black plate number to tell what year car they actually came on. Because they all had the "63" stamped in them it was difficult to tell what year they were first issued.

The black plates on my 63 now are off a 69 I had back in the 80's. A beautiful black on black 350/350, 4-speed, A/C car that I had to get rid of to buy my first house. I kept the plates for whatever reason. It was nice to have them when I bought the 63 two years later when I registered the car here in CA.

[Monte M.]

Re: CA to Reissue Black Plates

One more thing. A lot of the black plates, on quite a few cars that I know of, have been restored. If the plates on your car are so perfect, there is a good chance they have been restored. I have seen plates that were pretty rough come back from the guy that does the restoration. They actually come back flawless. Of course if you really examine them on the back side you can see a few flaws, maybe.

He has the exact colors figured out. I am not sure if he does only CA plates or not. If anybody is interested in who does the CA plates, let me know and I will see if I can find the information.

Attached: My old "63" plate with the "82" date on it.
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[Douglas L.]

Re: CA to Reissue Black Plates

Doug,
I am not sure what you me by not needing a year sticker.

What I meant (and this all pertains to the black/yellow plates from 63-69) is that if you get a set of old plates and bring them in to the DMV to be assigned to your car using the YOM program and your car happens to be a 63 you wont need to bring in the 1963 year tag. If you car is a 64-69 you will need to bring in a 64-69 year tag. When you get the plates assigned to your car the DMV will send you some small metal tags that get bolted to the plate to display the current year tags but youre supposed to continue to display the old year tag as well.