Where is the cheapest place to buy private number plates?
We have already covered why different private number plates can fetch so much more than others in our earlier article Why are private number plates so expense? But why do prices vary so much between agents for the same registration?
A proportion of the number plates that an agent is advertising at any given time will be advertised on behalf of the current owner. In this instance, the agent does not own the plate as stock, as they have not bought the registration from the current owner, and will only hand over money if they are successful in selling the registration - less a commission of course!
How this looks is the agent will offer you a sum -payable if and when they sell your plate. The agent will then advertise the registration for more than what has been offered to the owner, taking in to account how much they could realistically achieve for it on the open market. The difference is taken as their commission.
Now as an owner of a plate that you want to sell, you may wish to increase your chances of the plate being seen and, hopefully, purchased. One way of doing this is to approach multiple agents to advertise your plate for sale.
This is where advertised prices for the same plate begin to vary. Each agent will have a different view on the value of the plate in the first place (due to rarity / uniqueness / type of registration etc), which will be reflected in their advertised price. They will also have different levels of overheads to cover and, therefore, some agents may seek to generate a larger commission on a sale - one way to do this is to increase the price they advertise the plate for.
Therefore as a buyer, the cheapest place to buy your private number plate is from is simply the agent that is selling it for the lowest price! But as a buyer looking to purchase a given private registration, how do you know the price you are seeing it advertised for is a competitive one? You could visit the many different agent websites and see if they are selling the registration you are looking for, and note the differing prices on offer - a time consuming and manual process.
Until recently that was the only option available to you, as unlike other markets (property, insurance, energy etc), private number plates did not have a central place to compare prices. And that is where RegCompare can now help you - providing a central place to compare prices across eight different number plate agents.
Since launching in April 2019, RegCompare has helped over 800 potential buyers find the cheapest prices for their desired private number plate, with typical savings in the region of 20-25%.