Finally, decided to sell your old car to wreckers? Parting with your dear car must be hard enough already, so maybe the only memory of it you want to keep is the license plate. Even more so if the plate was personalized to your taste.

Don’t worry, it’s completely possible to keep your license plate for yourself before selling your car to wreckers. In fact, you can even assign that plate to a new car if you ever get one. In this article, we will guide you through how you can do that

How to keep your personalised plate before selling your car?

Keeping your plate isn’t a complex process. When you sell to wreckers, they will tell you to keep your number plate in case you forget. As it is part of the process of deregistering your vehicle.

To hold on to your personalised number plate, you have to go to one of NZTA’s agent offices. There you will have to fill up the appropriate application form properly.

However, to keep your government-issued plate, you have to redesign it first. You can do that at KiwiPlates just like you bought the plate from them initially. For the redesign, first, you have to enter an existing number plate combination that’s registered in your name. Then you just have to design another plate and pay a fee of $179 to buy it.

How to transfer your personalised number plate to another vehicle?

When you buy a personal number plate, you also buy exclusive ownership of the specific set of characters present on the plate. And these plates can be transferred from person to person, as well as vehicle to vehicle.

In order to transfer your personalised number plate to another vehicle, you have to fill out an application for a replacement plate (MR6A) transaction at one of the agent locations of NZTA. The agent will check the number plate, so you have to prepare it properly beforehand. The agents of NZTA are-

Other registration agents displaying the NZ Transport Agency logo.

How to transfer your personalised plate to another person?

You might have decided to transfer the registration of your plate to another person. For this, you only have to go through two steps-

Both you and the new owner will have to complete a Transfer of Entitlement form. You can do this online.

Afterward, send a copy of the form to the government plate manufacturer Licensys.

Do you need to tell your insurer when you change your number plate?

Absolutely. Taking your number plates off a car, keeping them, or transferring them to someone else, might all seem fairly easy, but they are very important activities. Your insurance company needs to be notified of this matter. You should update your insurance policy with the new details.

You will also need to let the company know if you transferred the private plate to a new car or a new person. Usually, you won’t have to make any kind of payment for that, but some car insurance companies may ask for an admin fee for this.