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Temporary Registration - goes with the plate at left |
WV County issue - looks more like a Vermont plate! |
Flew into Pittsburgh, and rented a car there. Immediately noticed the www.state.pa.us license plate on the car, No sticker on the plate, BUT there was a temporary registration paper in the rear window which had the plate number. I'm all set to go! On the drive down to WV, I noticed that generally 1 in 4 cars sport the new WWW plates, most still carry the old gold on blue.
Temporary Registration -
goes with the plate at left
WV County issue - looks more like a Vermont plate!
The night before my interview at NASA, I was warmly greeted by the former Secretary Treasurer of ALPCA, Gary Kincade. He lives in Bridgeport, just down the road. After dinner with his family, I followed them to his place. To say this guy collects license plates is an understatement. You should really see what he has. Virtually every kind of US porcelain plate made - or so it seemed to me. The following is only a small sampling of what he has on the walls. And very tastefully displayed by state, I might add. He was nice to let me photograph all that I wanted. Needless to say I quickly ran out of "film" in my digital camera.
Might as well start with the WV plates, after all that's where we are. They're where you first walk in. The first issues from 1906 to 1911 look like this:
Notice how the pair of 1906 plates are different! What's more, Gary even has the original registration papers to go with these plates. The car was registered to a banker, and funny how they were never used. They look like they are made of flimsy embossed metal! Not shown is a 1909 Cardboard plate (a stack of these were found at the Charleston County issing office). They were issued when they ran out of the porcelain plates.Next, we have locally issued city plates. These were issued in the teens by many of the mid size cities to collect an extra tax. Needless to say many residents didn't like that idea (since they had to pay for the state issued WV plates anyway) so these were discontinued in the mid teens. In some cases the plates were recalled as residents demanded their money back through court cases. Here's a small sampling of what's out there:
That last one got cut off. It's a motorcycle license from Wheeling, I think. As you can see some are porcelain, others flat metal and still others are embossed, like those '06s. Gary assured me a Fairmont plate does exist, and it is porcelain, but he doesn't have one. Today all these plates, especially the porcelains, are highly collectible.Next, we have the state runs. He's got almost every state issued porcelain plate; it would be impossible to show you everything he has, but here's a sampling of some of the interesting early porcelains:
A nice array of Texas pre-states. Notice all the different cities. |
First 5 Virginia porcelains |
Gary doesn't collect just US plates. He's also got a lot of foreign plates, including Canada. Most of it is inaccessible in the basement, but he did put out a drawer to show me a couple "wow" plates:
This has got to be the Premier's plate! |
The very rare Happy Valley, Labrador first issue! |
He showed me a mint '20s Baja California plate and many others. Some of them are up on the rafters of his garage downstairs. Of interest to me were two unusual Japanese plates that I could help him identify:
This is a nice plate from Tokyo. The red part reads something like "Tokyo Vehicle Registration Plate". Many other prefectures have this, and it is often a tab rivited on the plate - this is the first time I've seen it directly embossed. I told Gary that my guess was a 1946 to 1950 era issue. It's too well made to be a pre-war issue which tend to be rather crudely made. Also it has slots for the validation seals, something that appears on all Japanese plates from 1951 on. I suspect they might have been doing something leading up to the nationwide format introduced in '51.
This next plate is no doubt some sort of US forces issue. I'd have to check my map closely to see where Musashi is, but it is obviously the name of a city or town closest to the base. It is not the name of a prefecture. Judging from this style, it looks like some sort of temporary motorcycle license, the kind you get when you buy a brand new bike and are waiting for the regular plate in order to complete the registration. Hard to say how old - I'm guessing early to mid 50s.
Before I go, I should mention that the collections don't stop at license plates. Gary has over 70,000 pop bottles, and judging from the amount of stuff in the basement, I believe it! He also collects WV postmarks, old clothing, key chain tags, porcelain signs. You name it, he collects it! His wife collects giraffes (hey, I can relate to that, because I collect tigers). Tigers? Gary had something for me, and then he comes back with a T-shirt: "Endangered Tiger" with a beautiful life-like tiger head on the front.
His son Orin (ALPCA 6666) collects Hard Rock Cafe pins and boasted that he's been to almost all the Hard Rock Cafes in the States. Incredible for a guy still in high school! I sure wish I knew about his collection because I was at the Hard Rock Cafe in Osaka this year and didn't even think about the special pins they make. Well next time I go, I'll help him out. Give me a couple of years when I save up enough to pay for these expensive trips to Japan!
His collection of pins is extensive. Of course the Hong Kong pin featuring the 1998 Year of the Tiger got my attention! Needless to say, it's now something I've gotta have for my collection of tigrobilia.
Copyright 2000-2001, Joseph P. Sallmen
Page created Oct, 2000.
Re-edited Nov 6, 2001