COLLECTING LICENSE PLATES

Some people dream of scaling a peak or writing a novel. Ethan Craft wants to collect at least one license plate from 500 global jurisdictions.

The quest has taken the 27-year-old across the world in search of junkyards, antique stores and other collectors willing to trade plates.

Stamp collectors are called philatelists. People who save coins are numismatists. License plate collecting is so arcane that there isn't a word for it. But there are thousands of people who so covet tags that they are willing to travel to remote corners of the globe—sometimes at great expense and personal risk—to score a rare find.

Some collectors focus on geographic regions. Others target tags based on design or color. Numbers are big draws, too, namely low ones, birth dates, the devilish 666 and the code for marijuana, 420. Some seek out diplomatic tags or presidential inaugural ones. Others pursue early porcelain plates or those from countries at war.

Tags from Vatican City are a holy grail for plate collectors. For enthusiasts of early American plates, it doesn't get much better than a 1921 Alaska tag, one of which is rumored to have changed hands for $60,000.

The Super Bowl of plate collecting takes place in July at the annual convention of the 3,000-member Automobile License Plate Collectors Association. This year's event, in Tulsa, Okla., marks the gathering's 70th anniversary.

Craft's obsession began at age four on road trips with his dad, peering out the back seat window to see how many different state tags he could identify. He later used a disposable camera to shoot out-of-state plates at the airport and malls, collecting them in a scrap book. Craft's parents took note. "One year, the tooth fairy left me a license plate instead of a couple of bucks," he said.

Craft has traveled to about 70 countries, collecting plates from 181 of the 193 U.N. member nations and about 400 global jurisdictions. He has about 2,000 plates in his core collection and another few thousand for trading.

To learn about the Automobile License Plate Collectors Association, see:
https://www.alpca.org/

To read the complete article (subscription required), see:
They Travel the World—and Cheat Death—for License Plates (https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/license-plate-collectors-cars-21c7506e)

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