If you have a box, garage, basement, or barn full of old license plates and are wondering who buys them, you've come to the right place.
We do!
At Rustic Plates, we buy old license plates and entire license plate collections from all over the country. Sometimes that means 20 plates someone found while cleaning out a garage. Sometimes it means a collection that took 50 years to build and contains thousands of plates.
A lot of the people who contact us aren't license plate collectors themselves. They inherited a collection, are helping settle an estate, are downsizing, or simply came across a pile of plates that has been sitting around for years.
And usually the first question is pretty simple:
Are these actually worth anything?
Yes, but probably not in the way you think.
What Is an Old License Plate Collection Worth?
One of the interesting things about license plates is that age alone doesn't determine value.
We've bought collections where some of the oldest plates weren't particularly valuable, while a much newer plate buried in the same box was one of the best pieces in the collection.
State, year, type, condition, number sequence, whether plates are a matching pair, and even small variations in a design can all matter.
And value is rarely spread evenly through a collection.
It's not unusual for 5 or 10 percent of the plates to account for half or more of what a collection is worth. The rest may be relatively common plates that only have modest value individually.
That's one reason we recommend having the entire collection looked at before selling anything.
We put together a separate guide to what old license plates are worth if you want to dig into this further.
Should I Sell My License Plates Individually or as a Collection?
This is probably the second question we hear most often.
If your goal is to squeeze every possible dollar out of a collection and you have plenty of time, you can absolutely research, photograph, list, sell, pack, and ship plates individually.
For a large collection, though, that can turn into a substantial project.
There is also a bigger problem: you need to know what you're looking at before you start.
We generally don't recommend pulling out a few plates that look old or interesting and selling those first. What looks valuable to someone unfamiliar with license plates isn't necessarily what collectors are looking for.
Once the best pieces are gone, the remaining collection can also become considerably harder to sell.
We prefer to look at collections intact. When we make an offer, we buy the whole collection. We don't pick out the valuable plates and leave you with hundreds or thousands of common ones to figure out afterward.
Don't Clean or Repaint Your Plates
This one is important.
If you've just pulled an old collection out of a garage, please don't repaint the plates to make them look nicer.
Original condition matters to collectors. Rust, fading, scratches, and wear don't necessarily ruin a plate. In many cases we'd much rather buy an honest, worn original than one that has been sanded and repainted.
The same goes for aggressive cleaning.
If they're dirty, that's okay. Send us photos as they are.
Also, if you have matching pairs or a run of plates from the same state over many years, try to keep them together. Those can matter when we're evaluating a collection.
How Do I Sell an Old License Plate Collection?
The easiest way to start is simply to send us some photos.
They don't have to be professional. Phone photos are perfectly fine and you can easily group 50 to 100 in one photo. We can zoom in.
For smaller collections, photos of everything are helpful. If you have hundreds or thousands of plates, don't worry about photographing every single plate individually. Start with some photos that give us a good idea of the size and type of collection.
We'll take a look and let you know what we think.
If we're interested in buying it, we'll work out the next step from there. We buy collections throughout the United States, Canada and more, so you don't need to be nearby.
→ Send us photos of your license plates
There is no obligation to sell.
Do You Buy Common License Plates Too?
Yes.
This is actually a big part of buying collections.
Most collections contain a mixture of better plates and very common ones. We don't expect every plate in a collection to be rare.
We buy the collection as a whole, including the ordinary plates.
That means you don't have to figure out which ones are valuable, sort everything into different groups, or worry about being left with the plates nobody wanted.
Do You Buy Large License Plate Collections?
Absolutely.
We've built Rustic Plates around handling license plates in quantity. We buy everything from small groups of plates to collections numbering in the tens of thousands.
Large collections don't need to be perfectly organized, either. If they're stacked in boxes, hanging on walls, sitting on shelves, or spread throughout a garage, that's fine.
Start with some photos and a rough idea of how many plates you think you have.
Do You Buy License Plates in Rough Condition?
Yes.
Condition affects value, of course, but a plate doesn't have to be beautiful for us to buy it.
We regularly handle worn, rusty, faded, bent, and otherwise well-used plates. Some older or unusual plates can still be collectible in rough condition, while common plates can have plenty of use for decor and craft projects.
Don't throw anything away just because it looks rough.
Let us see it first.
I Inherited a License Plate Collection. What Should I Do?
Mostly, don't do much yet.
Don't repaint anything. Don't start throwing away rough plates. Don't separate matching pairs. And don't assume the oldest-looking plates are automatically the valuable ones.
Take some photos of the collection as you found it.
If there are boxes of plates, spread enough out that we can get an idea of what's there. If it's a very large collection, overview photos are a perfectly good place to start.
Ready to Sell Your Old License Plates?
Whether you have a handful of old plates or a collection that took decades to build, we're happy to take a look.
Send us some photos, tell us roughly where the collection is located, and give us any background you know about it. If you don't know much about the collection, that's completely fine too.
→ Send your collection to Rustic Plates for a free, no-obligation evaluation.
We'll take it from there.
