Selling car plates with special numbers is becoming a good business in Gulf countries. Thanks to the huge inflow of petrodollars the wealthy have enough money to throw on extravagant car plates to add flavour to their lifestyles.
Riyadh Traffic Department was able to collect 17 million Saudi riyals ($4.53 million) on Monday from selling nine car plates in the first public auction for the new version of the Saudi car plates, held in Riyadh.
The highest bid went to the car plate (أ أ أ 1111), which was sold to an anonymous buyer for 6.45 million riyals. The plate, which is a combination between the first Arabic character and number one, is the most valued because it marks the first in the series.
All the nine car plates are a combination of unified numbers, starting with 1111 and ending with 9999, and the first Arabic character (أ). The only difference between the new car plates and the old is that the traffic department had added one additional numeric digit to the new plates. Thus, the new plates consist of three alphabetic digits and four numeric digits.
Riyadh Traffic Department will hold a similar auction on every Monday for the new plates, with revenues from the auction will go to the Ministry of Finance. Riyadh is the only city where these auctions take place.
Selling car plates in auctions has become a popular practice in Saudi Arabia since the first auction was held three years ago. Previous auctions were limited to just a select number of participants.
The highest bid for a car plate in the first auction in 2004 was 350,000 riyals, a fraction of the price of the newly introduced car plates sold on Monday.
In its first week after becoming a public event, the auction raised half of the amount that it did during the past three years, a sign of the demand for such luxury items in the kingdom.
The profit margin is very high for car plates as the official price for any car plate is only 100 riyals.
The auction will only introduce plates with special number and letter combination. The normal plates will be issued regularly by Saudi traffic departments kingdom-wide.
Special car plate’s auctions are common practice in the Gulf. In the UAE a special number plate auction
conducted by Abu Dhabi Police on Saturday 25-years old Saeed Al-Khouri paid 8 million dirhams for the number 11.
A similar event organised in Abu Dhabi in May raised 100 million dirhams for people with special needs and accident victims.
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