Bored Panda reached out to license plate collector, trader, and the man behind LicensePlateTok Ethan Craft to talk about all things license plates.
Ethan has been interested in license plates since he was a kid. He recalls his dad and him driving for what felt like hours—just too long for the then 3-year-old—so he decided to keep himself busy by pointing out the different license plates he saw on the road.
"I guess it worked a little too well and now I’m still interested in plates more than 20 years later," joked Ethan. The seemingly very innocent game quickly turned into a passion and eventually into an entire TikTok channel.
Besides regular license plates that don't usually say anything worthwhile unless you get lucky, there are also vanity license plates. And this is where humankind's creativity blossoms. Sure, you have your personal names or nicknames, but you can be crazier than that. The only limits are the space you have on the plates themselves and quantity of words available in whatever language you use, minus all the words your mom told you never to say.
"Almost everyone likes to show a little personality when they can, and custom personalized license plates are a great way to do that," elaborates Ethan. "One reason they seem to be becoming more common is that now they’re all over the world in Europe and Australia and the Americas, whereas they were once pretty limited to the United States. But seeing a funny or interesting plate on the road, that always makes my day."
It's been roughly 20 years that Ethan has been collecting license plates at this point, and it has been growing exponentially ever since he kicked off @LicensePlateTok.
"I haven’t done a full count recently but I must have hundreds, maybe even over 1,000, mostly from the U.S. and Canada, but I really want to expand my international collection and hopefully get a plate from every country in the world one day," said Ethan.
According to PD insurance, it is estimated that there are roughly 1.45 billion cars out there in the world. Double that and that's how many license plates there should be in theory. And hence you can imagine just how much room is there for creativity if you account for all the different countries and states with all of their different designs matched with people's ingenuity for shoving witty puns and one-liners into an average of 6 to 8 characters.
And Ethan's favorite license plate is also one of the more unique ones in the world: "It’s hard to pick just one favorite but I really love the license plates of the Northwest Territories in Canada, which are cut out to be in the shape of a polar bear."
Now, you might think that something as simple as a license plate—a metal rectangle with the most basic of automotive identification information on it—will stay just that and that there isn't much room to innovate.
There is.
Ethan shared with us, as well as in one of his videos, that there is such a thing as "digital" license plates. They have actually been a thing for several years at this point, being run as a pilot test in California. Basically, they are "an iPad on the back of your car that shows the plate number", as Ethan put it.
And while the novelty and technology sounds cool, providing a tad bit more customization and even acting as a safety feature (notifying if a car was stolen), it comes at a much steeper price. Besides that, it's only a matter of time until someone hacks them and uses the built-in GPS to track people and do other sorts of invasive maneuvers.
"California has also recently launched wrapped plates for the front of peoples’ cars only, which are basically stickers for people who don’t want to drill holes into their front bumper," added Ethan.
