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Hey, it's an old-fashioned links page!
Yes indeed. Since so many independent hobbyist websites have succumbed to digital rot and disappeared into the ether over the last twenty years, I feel a moral duty in 2026 (both as a plate collector, and as a librarian) to celebrate some of the survivors.
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Detailed information or original research.
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Interesting writing and long-form commentary.
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Numerous illustrations or photographs.
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Excellent layout; easy to navigate, and accessible to older browsers.
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Regularly and recently updated.
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"All-star sites:" The best of the best!
I've also included several symbols to forewarn of common technological caveats, all in the interest of encouraging best practices for the open web:
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Part of a closed, corporate "walled garden" ecosystem.
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Content is inaccessible without enabling and running JavaScript.
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Frames or fixed DIVs imperil navigation or block the full view of pages.
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Mandatory, backwards-incompatible implementation of HTTPS effectively blocks access from older browsers and platforms.
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Broken images or internal links.
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Inline images are linked to bloated sources instead of resized thumbnails, affecting performance.
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Makes use of proprietary Google image formats not supported by editors or older browsers.
All of these links have been curated, and I encourage you to visit them:
Novelty website for making custom vanity-plate images. The generic font kind of makes the illusion fall apart, but we were amused more easily back in 2000. :-P
Website of a Hungarian collector with a 5000-piece(!) worldwide collection. Numerous photographs!
By Eric Tanner. Eric is one of the premier researchers of the hobby...with a multi-decade-long commitment to tracing the history and documented serial range of every plate type in North America! His notes are dense, yet easy to read. You can easily burn an entire afternoon just poring over the pages of his site, which might be the single most valuable source of licence plate reference information on the Internet. Caveat: JavaScript links.
Site of a collector in Vienna, Austria with plates from the whole world over, all helpfully presented to scale. Simple, easy-to-navigate layout.
By Gary Fox. Pictures of virtually every Arizona passenger and non-passenger type as well as serial range reports by county, with an emphasis on older plates.
Home page of the ALPCA...the premiere collectors' organization in North America. Members receive a four-colour magazine and now have access to a host of exclusive online resources, including the club's revamped archives and a digital repository of past newsletters. I've been a member of ALPCA since 2005, and I thoroughly recommend it!
By Jon Upton. An old favourite; an Ontario-based website with a lineage back to the 1990s. Features the author's musings ("My 2 Cents") and information about local meets. Unfortunately it's also laced with technological hurdles, including JavaScript menus that break in Pale Moon 33.
Data-rich website (actually a weblog) with up-to-the-month information on high series in Belgium. Presented in English. Also features an entertaining list of skipped combinations and their rationale.
By Nick Di Fonzo. Above-average 1990s-style website, with Texas content and international oval codes. Also links to a photoblog that was maintained through 2025.
A website from Western Samoa (.ws)? No, it's from Jeff Francis of Florida, with impressive wall photos of state-by-state runs.
Simple site with collection pictures and a neat feature on windshield stickers, both registration and inspection! The Pennsylvania sticker section is updated regularly.
Photographs of impossibly-rare porcelain enamel plates issued by U.S. cities and counties in the early 20th century; all from the author's collection.
Cliff and Sue Weese hail from my home state of West Virginia. Their website features photos of early WV plates (alas, with more placeholders than content) and promotes their automotive museum, near Parkersburg.
By Greg Lindberg and Dave Smith. Pictures of numerous Connecticut types, grouped by type and era. Not a bad site, but it's hosted on Tripod, so be forewarned that half the time it'll flake out and spit a 502 error instead of real content. See also: Illustrated History of Connecticut License Plates.
A specialized and extremely detailed information resource on the licence plates of the Capital City, written by Rhode Island plate wizard (and ALPCA Hall of Famer) Richard Dragon. Unfortunately it's fallen by the wayside in recent years and is no longer accessible from its namesake domain, though fortunately the .com fallback still works.
One of the best new sites that have come along in recent years, with impeccably-researched deep-dives into the registration history of Washington State and the Pacific Northwest. Weblog format, with RSS.
By Thomas Thorsen. One of the no-frills, data-rich European websites I'm quite partial to! Features high sightings, history, and even a discussion forum. In Danish, naturally...but why let a language barrier stop you?
Purveyors of the remanufactured 1940s black plates that are status symbols in the Diamond State. Ordinarily I wouldn't link to a manufacturer's website, but this one hosts a history of Delaware plates written by Dave Lincoln that's well worth a read!
A project that must be seen to be believed: Photos of every Delaware licence plate from 1 to 1000 seen on the road, plus a type-by-type, year-by-year breakdown of Delaware's plate history with known variations and serial ranges! A shame about the fixed header, though.
Old Netherlands-based reference site, covering the whole world over. The depth of coverage varies wildly from one country to another, and has been bettered by other websites...but it's still worth a look, if you feel like armchair globetrotting like it's 1999!
Porcelain-enamel licence plates from the early twentieth century are some of the most colourful and desired collectibles in the hobby. This website goes above and beyond to document them all...from the U.S., Canada, and Mexico alike, along with many rare city issues! Punctuated with historical photos, and perfect for long-form reading.
Homepage of prolific Ontario collector Eric Vettoretti. Be forewarned that the pages are large: The "collection" link alone contains 20MB of inline images! Also features vintage Ontario highway photos.
The premiere organization for European and broadly world-focused number plate collectors and researchers. Publisher of Registration Plates of the World, a definitive reference source for members.
Yes, in the plural! By Sander Elie. A photography site documenting Europe's many countries, on plates, on cars. No fixed headers, thankfully, but a "Home" graphic floats on the screen like a GeoCities watermark.
By David Nicholson. An excellent museum-like gallery arranged by jurisdiction in chronological order. Unfortunately since mid-2025, the URL has done nothing but prompt a 403 Forbidden error; at least on Pale Moon and SeaMonkey. Parking the link here in the hope that this is a fluke, and Dave gets his server back online soon...
This website contains exhaustive and detailed information about the history and manufacture of Finnish number plates, if you can read it: It's written in Finnish! Claims to be optimoitu for the Mac-only Safari browser...sigh.
Sigh...say what you will about Florida; it's dismal, but it sometimes has interesting plates. Plenty of Florida non-passenger content to be gleaned, although you may have to sift through graphics and chaff to find it. "Site viewed best with IE6:" Cringe.
The (dense) website of the French plate collectors' association, with exhaustive information both on the registration history of the French Republic and the organization itself. Contains a worldwide photo gallery (sourced mostly from elsewhere on the Internet); though a host of technological caveats make it painful to use.
A straightforward gallery of a German collector's licence plate collection; predominantly American.
One out of a grand total of three websites I remember discovering when I first got online, waaaaay back in 1995! A minor miracle that it still exists. Features pictures of coincidental combinations in 1990s Netherlands, now vintage in their own right.
'90s-style framed website by an oddly US-obsessed German collector. Some empty pages.
By Günter Burczyk. Small site by a German collector with a remarkable worldwide collection, presented in a series of gallery shots.
Want to know what the latest plate numbers are in sequence for every U.S. state and Canadian province in North America? This is the place for you...with historical observations and submissions, too. Annoying fixed header. Updated daily!
By Christopher Garrish. A verbose look at Canada's Left Coast province, also serving as an impromptu diary for the thoughts of the author.
By Bill Johnston and Richard Miller. Amazing coverage of the Land of Enchantment, with high-resolution images, comprehensive runs of incredibly rare types, and analytical coverage of select topics! One drawback is that the highres photos are linked inline, making most of the pages multiple megabytes in size.
Another exhaustive Connecticut-focused website, this time by Joe Wasielewski, covering much the same ground as the last but without the flaky Tripod hosting! Heh. Numerous photographs, grouped by type via two navigation links at top.
By Janko Kästner, a German collector obsessed with...Florida, of all things? An almost comedic trainwreck visually, with hard-to-read text, horizontal scrolling, and sentences split between multiple paragraphs. Numerous international consular and diplomatic plates.
Another Florida-focused website, and another project by prolific St. Petersburg collector Jeff Francis. This one is focused on county-by-county runs...quite an accomplishment, given how sparsely-populated some of the panhandle counties can be!
Jim Moini specializes in New Jersey, Mexico, and commercial trucks and trailers...and how! Literally thousands of pictures, documenting the Garden State's hundred-plus years of history and other areas of expertise in exhaustive, illustrated detail. Also contains a host of scans of historical reference documents for various jurisdictions. Detractions are JavaScript links, and fixed headers that make the site feel like peering through a Venetian blind. May prompt older browsers with a 403 error.
Themed state-by-state runs, and a smattering of international plates from Europe and beyond.
An in-depth look at the licence plates issued by U.S. states and municipalities during the first decade of the twentieth century...and not just those made of leather. Includes year-by-year and state-by-state rundowns, photographs, and notes on scarcity. JavaScript not required, but nag appears with it disabled.
Just a list of vanity combinations and their meanings. No photos, but worth seeing as a perfectly-preserved web artifact from the salad days of the mid-1990s.
By Timothy O'Connor. Simple, 1990s-style website with galleries arranged by province, state, and country. Opening too many pages in succession will overload the server.
By Jim Palmer. Texas plate history with letter block breakdowns since 1975, and an entertaining feature of "things that look like licence plates but aren't."
By Jeroen Coninx of Belgium. Another world-focused site with pictures of plates on cars, procured by the site author over more than two decades!
By Colin McGregor. Colorado and Michigan collector with a focus on county runs and less-populated counties. Very impressive! Nice layout, too, with the caveat that a few pages have oversized inline thumbnails resulting in page sizes of 12MB or more.
By Michael Kustermann. An old and long-established site, originally hosted by Georgia Tech in the mid-1990s. Aims to provide a clinical encyclopaedic overview of world registration systems and history. Unfortunately it makes some odd design decisions along the way (text as images, JPEGs assembled from other JPEGs), and serves itself via a clumsy framed layout that looked bad even in 2000. Little-changed in the decades since; yet still updated, surprisingly enough.
Another one of the still-online, stopped-in-time plate sites that I remember from back in 1995(!). From the Netherlands. A few pictures and (dead) external links from three decades past.
By Manny Jacob. A type-by-type, variation-by-variation takedown of the current types on Manitoba roads. Requires horizontal scrolling at most resolutions.
By Ross Metcalfe of (where else?) Manitoba, with a slight focus on motorcycle plates. Nice, attractive layout, let down a bit by incomplete content and improperly-thumbnailed images.
By Peter van der Krogt. Small gallery of U.S. plates with cartographical graphics.
By Tom Smith. Page (in the singular) with some Mexican motorcycle pictures. Not much; but hey, it's a relic of the 1990s that still exists...
Very simple: A virtual museum of New Hampshire's plate history (and a little bit of Maine, too), presented through a series of photographs.
Long-lived European site, with photos of plates from all over the world...photographed on location in Norway! Also includes detailed information on Norwegian plates.
By Tomas Rezelj. Nice overview of Argentina's colourful registration history, with in-depth writing and pictures of issues clear back to 1904. Available in English or en español. 2000s fixed-width layout.
By John McDevitt with Jordan Irazabal. Everything you possibly wanted to know about the licence plates of the Keystone State: Types, variations, serial rundowns (from 1906 to present!), and current highs! Annoying fixed header. Regularly updated with news and photos every Sunday.
Weblog of plate sightings in Mexico (last maintained in 2020), with numerous photos from various states. In Spanish.
By Daniel Zimmermann. Hundreds of photographs of French plates, particularly from the department of Bas-Rhin (67), as well as content from the whole world over! Horizontal scrolling on most resolutions. In French.
By Renaud Olgiati. An overview of the registration plates issued by the landlocked South American nation of Paraguay, originally written in 2002-03 for a French reference website.
A spin-off of the License Plate Shack (see entry below), showcasing 1976 license plates and several other themed runs formerly hosted on that site. Unfortunately it also inherits the Plate Shack's propensity for improperly-thumbnailed images, resulting in slow load times on high-speed connections.
By Hans Stedehouder of the Netherlands. Worldwide collection, grouped by country and theme...although some things are missing, since some of the navigational links have inexplicably been commented out!
By Marc Welby and Mike Sells. Static site imitating the look of a server-generated gallery, mostly eclipsed since 2007 and riddled with withdrawn content and broken links. The one area that is still maintained is the "Y2K Page," a simple catch-all of submitted licence plate photos. Unfortunately these pages contain inline links to huge high-resolution images instead of resized thumbnails...resulting in absurd loads of 60MB on some pages, impairing performance and causing browser crashes if you're not careful!
A photographer's scavenger hunt, capturing vehicles in Estonia that have travelled there from the whole world over. Also tracks high number sightings on Estonian plates.
In the late 1990s, Drew Steitz's PL8S.com might have been the most lively licence plate hobby site on the Internet. Unfortunately it's taken a tumble in the decades since, and its current vestige is rife with missing content and dead links. The photo guide to grading is still online.
Italy, anyone? A blast from the past that's still the best online resource on Italy's attractive plates, covering their coding and evolution from 1905 to 1999...though it's no longer updated.
Website by a Swiss photographer named Christian, documenting locally-sighted plates and vehicles from the whole world over! Organized by country, with sidebar navigation and weekly updates.
By H. R. Stoecker. Collector's gallery, with a focus on Native American issues and a 1952 run.
A regularly-updated photoblog of unusual plate and vehicle sightings from the Czech capital, and the author's travels and rallies throughout Europe.
Vintage website by a German collector, with extensive information on the plates of both the Federal Republic of Germany and the DDR since the Second World War. Available in English oder Deutsch.
Everything you wanted to know about licence plates from the "Last Frontier," arranged by type, serial block, and subject. Lots of pictures, no-nonsense layout, and a huge inspiration for my own site design and plate research. Last updated in 2008...but never fear, Royce is still in the hobby, busily working behind the scenes on ALPCA.org!
High numbers and observed serial ranges on French number plates, both in the old department-coded style and the consolidated series introduced in 2009. Written in French, and fairly navigable with or without knowledge of the language. (Here's the current high page, if you'd like to cut to the chase!)
By David Urios Mondéjar. Spain, anyone? Day-by-day high sightings back to 2000 (requires JavaScript), with year-by-year sightings back to 1900(!). Simple layout, presented in four languages.
By Ross Day. The most thorough multi-jurisdiction birthyear type set I've ever seen...and one that my own collecting practices have taken a healthy dose of inspiration from! Hosted on Flickr...which sadly, has become almost unusable as a website following disastrous 2013 and 2015 redesigns that impaired performance and broke established functionality.
By Andreas. Exactly what it says on the tin: A small collection of U.S. licence plates, predominently recent issues and graphics grouped by theme. Last maintained in 2008.
A collector's gallery, with an emphasis on New York and New Jersey. Also covers the prop "plates" used on vehicles in studio productions. Pleasing layout.
By Barbara Jo Birt, last updated in 1999. Most of the links have been mangled (and the 1943 Victory Vehicle plate is a reproduction), but there's still content to be gleaned. Hint: Change /~bbirt/ in the URL to /bbirt/ to view the subpages.
By Gideon Nicksic. New-ish site dedicated to the Badger State, with an impressive array of pictures and info in tow (including confirmed serial ranges). Recommended!
Pictures of an exhaustive worldwide collection from a Switzerland-based collector, with almost no country or administrative area overlooked! Annotations and navigation in French.
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