By Steven Church
Feb. 19 (Bloomberg) -- The most valuable item in Charles
Murphy's estate was the black-and-white license plate on his
2005 Chrysler 300.
Murphy's family sold Delaware plate No. 6 at auction on
Feb. 17 for a U.S. record $675,000, more than twice the previous
high. The buyer was a family-owned property company that owns
several low-number plates.
``We have his house listed at $350,000 and we couldn't give
it away,'' said Murphy's 54-year-old son, John.
Delaware is the only U.S. state where license plates are
easily transferred in private transactions, allowing buyers who
want the prestige of a low number to bid up prices, said Jeff
Minard, a historian with the Automobile License Plate Collectors
Association.
In some countries, governments hold auctions, often to
raise money for charity. On Feb. 16, a buyer in Abu Dhabi paid a
world record 52.2 million dirhams ($14.2 million) for plate No.
1.
``We wanted to be No. 1,'' Hamdan Khouri, the brother of
buyer Saeed Abdel Ghaffar Khouri, told reporters after the sale.
``Who doesn't like to be the best in the world?''
As the auctioneer in Delaware pushed bidders to go higher,
he told them the price was a bargain compared with the Abu Dhabi
sale a day earlier. The eventual buyer was New Castle, Delaware-
based Fusco Management, which develops commercial property.
``We have one on every family member's car,'' said Frank
Vassallo IV, 25, who made the winning bid on behalf of the
company.
Vassallo, the grandson of family patriarch Anthony Fusco,
took instructions over a mobile phone as he outbid at least six
rivals at a packed convention center in the resort town of
Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.
Onlookers
Bidders had to pre-register and make a $50,000 cash
deposit. About 1,200 people gathered to watch, including three
of the former plate owner's children.
Among low-digit plates owned by the Fusco family is
Delaware No. 9, purchased a few years ago for $185,000. The
family considers the plates a good investment, Vassallo said.
``They beat the S&P,'' Vassallo said, referring to the
Standard & Poor's 500 Index of stocks.
In U.S. states other than Delaware, drivers have to be born
into the right family, get lucky at the local department of
motor vehicles, or have good political connections to obtain
low-number plates, said Mike Naughton, a former president of
Plate Collectors Association.
Naughton, a former mayor of the Chicago suburb of
Manhattan, Illinois, said he obtained most of his low-number
plates through friendships with state politicians, including
several who served as Secretary of State, the public official
who regulates the distribution of license plates in Illinois.
`Personal Relationship'
``You are not going to get a two- or three-digit plate
unless you have a personal relationship with someone in
Springfield,'' he said, referring to the state capital.
Last year, former Illinois Governor George Ryan began a 6
1/2-year prison sentence after a federal corruption
investigation found that some state officials gave out low-digit
plates in return for political donations.
Naughton said he got his plates without breaking any law.
In Washington D.C., with 237,000 vehicles, plate numbers 1
through 1,250 can only be given out by the mayor or city council
members, said Reid Williamson, who has been collecting rare
plates since he was a child in Lewes, Delaware.
In most U.S. states neither money nor political influence
can guarantee a low-number plate. Government regulations ban the
private transfer of plates and control how they are issued,
either by making the assignment random, or on a first-come,
first-served basis.
Political Scandals
Political scandals caused Massachusetts to create an annual
lottery for low-number plates in 1987, said Ann Dufresne, a
spokeswoman for the state's Registry of Vehicles. Low numbers
are typically returned to the state because a vehicle's owner
dies or no longer owns a car. Massachusetts and Virginia are
among states in which low numbers can only be transferred to a
relative.
Since the first Delaware plates were issued in 1909, the
state has used numbers issued in sequence to license each of the
state's 737,000 vehicles. The first three are reserved for the
governor, lieutenant governor and treasurer.
License plate No. 6 was a gift to Murphy, a surveyor who
died last year aged 89, from his father-in-law in 1973.
The family expected to sell Murphy's 2005 Chrysler for
about $14,000, John Murphy said. That's about 2 percent of what
Vassallo paid for the license plate that once graced its bumper.
