'D' day as car plate goes for HK$20.2m

The personalized car plate "D" went for HK$20.2 million in a Transport Department auction yesterday, making it the third priciest after single-letter car plates "W" and "R" sold for HK$26 million and HK$25.5 million in 2021 and last year, respectively.

The "D" plate was the main draw among 49 personalized car plates up for grabs at the department's Lunar New Year license plate auction at the Hong Kong Convention & Exhibition Centre. The sale proceeds of HK$2.45 million from the auction will go to the Government Lotteries Fund, a department spokesman said.

Starting at HK$5,000, the first bid for the "D" plate already hit HK$5 million. The price further rose to HK$6 million 10 minutes later and ballooned from there. After a 20-minute battle between two bidders who placed a total of 74 bids, a woman, holding number plate 83, bagged the car plate for HK$20.2 million - a whopping 4,040 times its starting price.

The winner didn't answer reporters' questions and left after the auction.

The second-highest price of the day, for the "132" plate, was HK$1.01 million.

During the auction, some bidders were left in shock after hearing the high base prices. Among the 49 license plates, nine were blank character plates.

However, no two-digit blank character plates were available yesterday and only two three-digit plates "382" and "132" were up for grabs.

The rest were mostly composed of the auspicious number 8, symbolizing prosperity in Chinese, such as "AA 8888" and "XX 1888" as well as "WE 88" and "GC 888."

A man who held the number plate 38, snatched the "AA 8888" plate for HK$560,000, while the "XX 1888" plate went for HK$98,000. But 12 license plates were left unsold amid the disinterest of car owners, including the "382" plate with its base price of HK$775,000.

Ngan, an owner of registration number supplier Lucky Number Center, said: "I believe the plates this year are not considered extremely outstanding or attractive. The Transport Department has limited supply."

He also noticed that the atmosphere of this year's auction was noticeably different from last year's, maybe due to the quality of the license plates being auctioned.

"Although there is anticipation for 'D' letter plates, they are numbers representing feng shui that are only significant to people working in certain industries. These plates can at most be interpreted as 'dragon' or 'dollar'," he said.

Unlike last year's "R" letter plate which could be associated with the auspicious number nine and was widely applicable to the general public, the auction for this year was "slow to heat up."

But Ngan said the final transaction price exceeded HK$20 million, which was higher than his initial estimate of around HK$10 million.

During the first day of the auction on Saturday, the department sold a total of 203 car plates, bringing in about HK$1.18 million. The license plate "CC 6666" fetched the highest price of HK$56,000.

eunice.lam@singtaonewscorp.com

adelyn.lau@singtaonewscorp.com