Reg change

Cit6

Just a quick question.
I have recently sold my private reg. Sent the V5 to DVLA and i got the old number back. I have owned the car from new.
There has been 3 private plates on the car over the years and always got the plate back.
I know its possible DLVA could have given/sold the old plate to someone else so i never put it on retention, its worth nothing.

This time however, the V5 say non transferable. never happened before.

I was just wondering if anyone knows why?

Herzlos

I don't think they make any promises about what plate you get back but it's usually the original one. It's always possible they sold it but it's unlikely.

What happens if you put the original reg into something like autotrader or webuyanycar to see if it shows as being associated with a different car.

facade

Seems it is a recent thing. It means the car has previously had a personal plate, and this VRM cannot be transferred to another vehicle. You can transfer another personal plate onto it, but you cannot transfer this VRM onto another vehicle.

I've no idea why.

Cit6

facade said:

Seems it is a recent thing. It means the car has previously had a personal plate, and this VRM cannot be transferred to another vehicle. You can transfer another personal plate onto it, but you cannot transfer this VRM onto another vehicle.

I've no idea why.

Thanks.
When a car has had a plate transfer, it flags up on a HPI report anyway. Plus i have noticed not all V5s have non transferable on them, even though its had a Private plate on in the past!
Maybe DVLA dont want you to make money selling the plate (though mine is worthless to anyone) 

facade

Cit6 said:

Maybe DVLA dont want you to make money selling the plate (though mine is worthless to anyone) 

That is sort of why they do it with "old" vehicles, when you sell the original 123 AB they give you another age related plate of the same format, and if you had a "good" replacement you could sell that and they'd run out of unallocated numbers.

I've not heard of them marking an original registration that has only ever been on it's "own" car as non-transferable though, only Q plates and age related replacements, but I found a website that says it happens.

droopsnoot

Cit6 said:

I know its possible DLVA could have given/sold the old plate to someone else so i never put it on retention, its worth nothing.

I don't think that happens any more. There have been some cases (I'm thinking of 50s or 60s competition cars) where plates were re-sold because the car had disappeared, but then the car re-imported or re-discovered, the new owner of the vehicle applied to the DVLA for the original plate back, got it, and whoever had bought the plate had to hand it back. To avoid this, plates aren't re-issued. Even if you know the original vehicle has been scrapped, a destruction certificate issued, you still can't buy the plate from it. 

There was a time that when you took off the cherished plate, the one you received might not have been the original plate, I was last doing this in the 90s and early 2000s and I think the first few didn't get their original plates back. Later on, we learned that it was worth keeping the old plates as they got into the habit of giving the original back when the cherished plate was removed. I don't recall ever seeing them marked "non-transferrable" but as we were removing the plates prior to selling the vehicles, I wasn't looking. As facade said above, the usual reason is if they've issued you with a plate that might have some value. Isn't there a "famous" non-transferrable plate "1 AN" which would be very valuable except that it's stuck on one car?