UK Single-Single Number Plate Registry

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In 2016 I maintained there were 419 possible 1x1's (232 of them spotted). A while later I established there were more.

160 of these were sold in DVLA auctions

So how many 1x1's were there? How is this determined?

A through to Y excluding I and Q is 23 letters, each forward plate having 1 through to 9, so 23 x 9 = 207

We have the same in reverse format, so another 207

Some forward letters also have 0, namely G, V and S, so another 3

Z was issued, but as far as I can ascertain only Z 1 and 1 Z survived, so another 2.

Or so I thought.........

You see Irish plates aren't transferrable (but they were and that's a story for another day) and for some foolish reason I never checked Z 2 through to Z 9, and the reverse. No, I don't know why either, but it was certainly an omission. So out of this comes two things, firstly an additional 8 plates forward, and 8 backwards. Secondly.... one of them is actually still on a vehicle! Details are below.

So 207 + 207 + 3 + 2 + 8 + 8 = 435 possible plates

So how many are still out there? Well. Many were revived in the 1950's/60's, about a dozen had fraudulent attempts to revive them in the early 2000's and through various sources I have established what has been lost, and there are some real surprises!

Listed below is a list of the plates yet to be spotted with some details, bear in mind that I use information from a variety of databases, and not a single one of these can be 100% accurate, but this is as good as it gets.

For ease I have split them into three sections.

I - The ones we know are out there. Somewhere

II - The missing DVLA auction plates

III - The rest

I - The ones we know are out there. Somewhere

II - The missing DVLA auction plates

Between 1989 and 2010 160 previously unissued 1x1 plates were auctioned by DVLA. All are accounted for..... except six

These six have always been a mystery. Were they ever even purchased? Well, I'm 99% certain they were. There is history of plates that sold at DVLA auction, weren't paid for for whatever reason, and were put up for auction again. Perhaps the most well known of these is 1 NHS, auctioned for a hammer price of £150K in July 2020 and auctioned again in October 2021 achieving a hammer price of £80K. I have confirmed that 1 J, 1 O and 1 X do actually exist and are held on retention. So what about 6 C, 5 O and 8 O? I have managed to confirm that they no longer exist. That's right, plates that sold for a combined £172K for some reason no longer exist. Two possible reasons are, 1/ Were they bought with the proceeds of crime and possibly confiscated later? 2/ Did the retention certificates simply expire? Prior to 2015 certificates had to be renewed on an annual basis. Did someone forget to renew? I do know of several three character plates that expired in this way and were lost.

III - The rest

About a dozen of the plates in this section had fraudulent attempts to revive them in the 2000's.

As a conclusion, we can now say that out of the 435 possible 1x1 plates, that 52 of them are confirmed lost. An additional 3 that were auctioned appear to have gone for whatever reason leaving 380. From these 366 are shown on this website leaving just 14 to spot. 10 of them are assigned to vehicles, 4 sit on retention.