WILMINGTON, Del. — When the gavel finally fell, the winning bid this weekend was from Ray and Donna White. The big prize was the black-and-white Delaware license plate No. 14 — all theirs for $325,000.
Emmert Auction Associates sold the rare relic during an estate sale in Rehoboth Beach, where the state's obsession with low-digit plate numbers was on full display. Two other tags — 457 and 1785 — sold at the auction for $32,000 and $8,000, respectively
But the most coveted prize was No. 14, which belonged to a prominent northern New Castle County family, according to auctioneer Butch Emmert. He didn't want to name the family, but said it'd been with them for a long time and its sale was a matter of liquidating a valuable asset.
"It's a great way to transfer wealth as an asset from one generation to the next, and to maintain a certain amount of prestige at the same time," Emmert said. "That's the cost of a home."
The auction Sunday at the Rehoboth Beach Fire Hall brought six bidders, with offers quickly skyrocketing. It was all over within about three minutes, and news spread quickly about the sale.
Reached by The News Journal on Monday afternoon, Donna White declined another interview. She said she and her husband were a bit shocked at the media attention their purchase received.
The flurry of interest is a byproduct of Delaware's vehicle-registration rules, which allows for license numbers to be transferred and passed down through generations, a quirk that has created a cottage industry of auctions and sales. Buyers are technically purchasing the number, not the actual license plate.
Delaware may be the last state in the nation to still recycle all its license numbers, which were first issued in 1909, according to Division of Motor Vehicles spokesman Mike Williams. The state's population is so small, expanding beyond 999,999 never has been an issue.
That didn't matter much until the mid-1960s, Williams said. That's when residents started to get a real fascination for the numbers — and especially for the low numbers, which made it a boutique industry.
"Fathers transfer them to their kids," Williams said. "Low numbers are in people's wills."
The unique love affair state residents have with their tags is only getting more Delawarean. The First State's blue-and-yellow license plate design hasn't been updated in more than 50 years.
It even weathered a 2014 survey of licensed drivers across the U.S. by Carinsurance.com that ranked the Delaware plate the ugliest in the U.S. It nearly caused a revolt locally.
"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and a lot of people in Delaware love their license plates," said Jordan Irazabal at the time. He's the creator of TheDelaware3000.org, which documents 3,000 of the lowest number tags in the state.
That same year, Vice President Joe Biden's old plate from his days as a U.S. senator went up for sale. It wasn't a low-digit plate, but it managed to generate a little buzz itself.
The numbers 1, 2 and 3 are reserved for the governor, lieutenant governor and secretary of state. The No. 6 was bought in February 2008 by real estate developer and philanthropist Anthony N. Fusco, who paid $675,000 — still the record for highest paid. The same family paid $185,000 at a 1993 auction for No. 9.
Both auctions were handled by Emmert, who acknowledged low-digit lust doesn't make a lot of sense to people outside Delaware — not until they get a look at how well those pieces of tin hold their value.
"It's something, being from Pennsylvania, that's kind of hard to wrap your head around," Emmert said. "But the truth of the matter is, it's a huge thing in Delaware, and probably always will be."
That's partly because they're recession proof, he said.
A five-digit tag can sell between $500 and $1,000, Emmert said. Three-digit tags can stretch the $4,000 to $10,000 range, and two-digit plates are worth anywhere between $125,000 and $350,000.
A one-digit plate — only seven are available to the public — is a $1 million investment.
"Some of these tags might be worth more than the cars they're on," said Aaron Dunphy, owner of LowDigitTags.com, which works as a brokerage for the state's buyers and sellers. "It depends on how low the number is and how bad they want it."
Drivers acting as if their tags aren't meant to be status symbols aren't fooling anyone, Dunphy said.
"For a lot of people, it's an ego trip," he said. "I have a few customers with millions in tags alone."
Dunphy said he's moving at least two tags a week on LowDigitTags.com, though the volume doesn't match his heydays in 2006 and 2007 when he watched about three times that number move over his site. Still, the truly rare numbers are exactly that.
"It'll be another six, eight, 10 years, even longer, before another high-quality low number becomes available," Williams said. "It's not something that happens every weekend."
