Friends of mine on Facebook have already seen this, so my apologies to them. But for the rest of you, this might be of interest. It is also a cautionary tale.
A friend of mine posted a link to an eBay auction earlier this week (he's not the one running it) for a used Nunavut licence plate. Now, if you had asked me how much something like that would go for, I would have said $10...maybe. I would have been off by a considerable amount.
There's less than 30 minutes left as I write this, but allow me to say that $197 for a licence plate is insane (Note: It went for $213. Unreal). I would also like to point out that the plate is almost exactly the same as the plate for the NorthWest Territories. For that matter, $20 in shipping for the licence plate is also batshit crazy, but anyway...
I made the joke after I read that auction - when it was at $110, by the way - that I had a new retirement plan. It involved me taking the day off, going to my tool box for a screwdriver, and then taking a casual stroll around town. You know, for my health and all...
If that plate goes for $200, then aside from P.T. Barnum really being a genius philosopher, I am tempted to go out this evening with a screwdriver. I figure 300 licence plates would be enough to take care of my sealift this summer.
To my knowledge, they're still making them for another couple of months, so they're not really that rare or scarce. But I have to admit, if someone offered me $200 for the plate off the back of our car, I wouldn't sell it. So perhaps there is some truth to the value of the plate. I also have no idea what the licence plate collectors market is like. Maybe it is in demand, but I find $200 a touch insane.
Although I will say this...if this actually becomes a trend, and those plates start getting a couple of hundred dollars, my plate is going to disappear (i.e. it's going to be hung on my wall) and I'll go and get one of the new ones. I'll suffer the ugly one on the car; but having someone steal it (because word is going to get out around town about this) and sell it on eBay would be really annoying...
Last Five
1. Lithium - Nirvana*
2. The Jessica numbers - The New Pornographers
3. Anna...go to him - The Beatles
4. Follow the arrows - Sean Panting
5. Ireland - Tori Amos
2 comments:
"The maddness of crowds". It's an old problem. You've probably forgotten it, living in Iqaluit.
I'm currently trying to track down a Nunavut license plate for my license plate collecting boyfriend. Let's just say, they're not the easiest thing to track down if you don't live near Nunavut. It's their rarity that makes people willing to pay big money like that. Rarity, and they're awesome shape!
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