The Price of Vanity: What Beautiful Car Numbers Are the Most Expensive Today

Unlike previous years with their chaotic pricing and multiple ways to get beautiful numbers for cars, modern times demonstrate a well-established and structured sector of services for searching, choosing and registering goods. Just type the appropriate request in Yandex - and you will get to portals with a full set of market participants and clear prices for certain types of signs. Here, for example, is how one of the main portals ranks numbers:

A potential buyer has a whole ocean of possibilities - from a budget number with three letters K for 420 thousand rubles to an incredible offer to buy three sevens with three letters B for the price of three executive Mercedes - for 80 million!) rubles.

At the same time, each sector has its own gradation, which ordinary citizens may not know about at all. But we will remind you what is considered a beautiful number today.

“Beautiful” numbers are those that contain memorable or unusual combinations of letters and/or numbers:

— Three identical letters: A123AA, T123TT.

— Three identical numbers: A333MH, B555TA.

— Match of three numbers and three letters: A111AA, H555NN.

— “Mirror” numbers: A212MA, H464AN.

— Numbers identical to the region code: A777MK 77, B099UA 99.

— Letters that form words: K678OT, R237OM.

— Digital combinations associated with the car brand: for example, for BMW models these could be numbers M540AB or H750AT.

— Letter combinations used in special series: AkhkhkhMR, AkhkhkhMO, SkhkhkhSS. Special series are combinations assigned to official vehicles, visually indistinguishable from regular ones, but tied only to government vehicles.

However, belonging to a special series is important only in combination with a certain regional code. For example, the AxxxMR 97 series is used by cars belonging to the Russian government and is not available to ordinary citizens. At the same time, the AxxxMR 90 series numbers do not belong to departmental transport, but are considered "nice" because few people know the regional code factor.

No one knows exactly how much money is circulating in the number plate market. As one of the sellers told us, almost all owners of cars worth 30 million rubles or more also buy numbers for them. At the same time, the luxury car market itself is constantly growing.

According to AUTOSTAT, by the beginning of 2020, 12.9 thousand cars belonging to the Luxury class were registered in Russia. The largest part of this car fleet (34.4%) belonged to the Bentley brand, amounting to more than 4.4 thousand units, followed by Mercedes-Maybach, Maserati, Rolls-Royce, Ferrari (797 units), Lamborghini (492 units) and Aston Martin (441 units). But over five years, the fleet of super-expensive cars has grown significantly. For example, in May 2025, sales of new "luxury" cars increased by 76 percent compared to last year, while sales of cheaper cars fell by 28 percent. A total of 67 premium cars were sold in May. Rolls-Royce is in the lead.

To this question, intermediaries-aggregators answer unequivocally and with all civic pride: all transactions for the sale of numbers are legal and comply with Russian legislation!

Firstly, you buy a number not from the State Automobile Inspectorate, whose officers are prohibited from such transactions under threat of imprisonment, but from private individuals who own these numbers. Aggregator sites act as information intermediaries, not selling numbers directly, which complies with Russian legislation.

There are several legal ways to get the number you want.

Buying a number together with a car. Find a car with the numbers you need. Draw up a sales contract. Deregister the car and submit an application to the State Traffic Safety Inspectorate to keep the number. This service is free, the number is kept by the State Traffic Safety Inspectorate for a year.

Alternatively, you can keep the number for yourself, replacing it with new plates for driving a car. In this case, you will need to pay 2,000 rubles for new plates, 500 rubles for a new registration certificate (STS) and 350 rubles for making changes to the vehicle passport (PTS) or 800 rubles for a new PTS if there is no space in the old one. Deregister your car. Register your car by registering the saved plates to it. Cancel the purchase and sale agreement or enter into a new one and return the car to the previous owner.

Risks: the car may be subject to restrictions due to unpaid fines or other encumbrances, which will make deregistration impossible until the debt is paid off. In this case, the new owner will have to negotiate with the previous owner or pay the debt himself.

Before purchasing, you need to check the car in databases, for example, on the website of the State Traffic Safety Inspectorate and the Federal Notary Chamber.

Selling your car to the owner of "nice" numbers. The scheme is similar to the previous one, but the seller and the buyer switch roles. The seller of numbers buys the car, registers it in his name with "nice" numbers, and then cancels the purchase and sale agreement or concludes a new one, returning the car to the original owner.

Risks : if the purchase and sale agreement is fictitious, you can lose both the car and the money. If the value of the car in the agreement is understated, you can only count on the specified amount.

Buying a donor car with "nice" numbers: This option involves buying a car with the desired numbers. Often, this is a cheap or old car, the technical condition of which is not important. The value is the number plate.

After purchase, the owner deregisters the car and saves the numbers, registering them to his main car. The "donor" car is disposed of or sold for parts, or resold.

The scheme seems long and complicated. But most sellers also offer design services.

In neighboring Georgia, anyone can buy personalized license plates for their car. The money goes to the treasury. Photo: social media

The answer to this question is easy: the Russian government does not sell numbers because it values ​​and loves the corruption of its security forces. There can be no other answer, considering that there are many countries in the world where the sale of beautiful and personal numbers occurs without any problems or questions. You don’t even have to fly to Dubai to get acquainted with their experience!

To acquire unusual car numbers with the desired combination of letters and numbers in neighboring Georgia, there is no need for connections or roundabout ways - they can be easily and officially purchased.

We have prepared for you the latest information from the website of the Service Agency of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia. According to the Law of Georgia "On Tariffs and Terms of Services Provided by a Legal Entity of Public Law - Service Agency of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia", the following prices are set for state license plates.

However, in Russia the theme of the numbers turned into the fight of Nanai boys.

In 2015, a State Duma deputy proposed selling beautiful numbers through auctions and sending the proceeds to regional road funds. The starting price at the auction was to be equal to the amount of the state duty. The bill was presented in the State Duma, but was not adopted.

Attempts were made to reduce the value of such numbers and combat corruption in the traffic police by issuing them to municipal transport. It did not help. The privileged numbers still migrated to Mercedes and Rolls-Royces.

In 2021, the concept of license plate auctions experienced a kind of revival. In August, a draft law was published in the State Duma information space, which provides for the legalization of the procedure for acquiring "exclusive" license plates - with repeating numbers, mirror images or identical letters. The initiator of this bill was State Duma deputy Alexander Sherin. He emphasized that "the funds raised from auctions should be used to increase the budget of road funds of the federal subject where these license plates were purchased, while the duration of the auction should not exceed 24 hours. In addition, the owner of such a license plate is obliged to install it on the vehicle within six months."

It was assumed that starting in 2022, any citizen would be able to legally participate in bidding for an individual number. However, on December 21, the State Duma rejected this bill. According to one version, the real reason for this outcome was the elementary inability of the territorial divisions of the State Traffic Safety Inspectorate to organize the online bidding process - the lack of readiness to promptly put the required documentation in order. According to another version, government officials expressed concerns about the emergence of speculators who, taking advantage of the lack of a fixed price, would massively purchase numbers at auctions with the aim of subsequently reselling them at significantly inflated prices.

This is exactly what is happening now, and without any auctions. But the authorities easily and quickly raise tariffs for all services related to the import, registration, sale and maintenance of cars.

— Of course, all the beautiful numbers come from the State Automobile Inspectorate. But selling them is an absolutely safe business for the traffic police. No one can prove that the number 001, issued to an old man from the queue for an old Niva, was issued for the purpose of reselling it for a Maserati, — says the number dealer. — That’s why we have both the wolves and the sheep safe…