New California Legacy License Plate program

[Senorpablo]

Even though I have a 60's truck, it came with a blue and yellow plate from the 70's. I preferred to have a set of the black and yellow plates as would have been original to the truck in '68. I looked into getting plates from ebay and applying for the CA YOM(Year of Manufacture) vintage plate program but it was both expensive and complicated. This new program seems like a pretty cool option, though it will be available to everyone regardless of the year of the car so the black plates will loose their prestige once everyone can have them.

If enough people pre-order, they will create legacy plates in CA including plates from the 50's(yellow/black), 60's(black/yellow), and 70's(blue/yellow).

More information here:
http://www.dmv.ca.gov/legacyplates/index.htm

[Calfdemon]

I personally (and a lot of other car collectors) are hoping that the legacy program does not get enough pre-orders and does not go through for the very reason you mentioned. If it goes through, anyone can get these plates and put them on ANY car, regardless of year. The only plates that the legacy program would help collectors with would be the blue/yellow as those plates cannot be used in the YOM program.

The YOM program is really not that complicated, but can be expensive depending on who you get your plates from and what condition they are in. You also need to buy a real registration sticker with the proper year that has a serial number that has not been used in the YOM program (which prevent people from using repop stickers) and those stickers can be expensive as well as there are only a few people that know how to salvage them properly and sell them.

I have done the YOM program on 4 different vehicles now and your costs are roughly as follows: $50 to DMV, around $50 for a proper year registration sticker, and anywhere from $50-$300 for a matching set of plates (depending on condition and seller) that are clear for use.

If you decide to try and go the YOM route, feel free to PM with any questions and I can help you out with what you need to do and some links or phone numbers to people I have bought from (both plates and stickers) in the past.