I bought a car accessory for £8k and now I’ve sold it for £85k – here’s how

A BUSINESSMAN who invests in personalised car accessories has made a whopping profit thanks to his keen eye.

Peter Johnson, 49, buys and sells car registration plates and says there is a way to spot the money makers.

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A growing number of people are starting to collect number plates as an investment, and knowing how to spot the winning combination of letters and numbers can see you quids in.

Peter, managing director of online marketplace Primo Registrations says that licence plates with just one, two or three characters have proved a good investment.

He adds: “In 2015 those plates were worth less than £10,000, but now you would be lucky if you buy one for £30,000.

“They are hard to get hold of and will get even scarcer over time.”

The investor points out that numbers indicating to a year of birth are also highly sought after.

He said: “The numbers 65 to 80 would have been worth a lot in past years, but now anything between 80 and 95 sells much better because a growing number of people born between 1980 and 1995 are buying these registrations.”

Peter has personally invested in thousands of registrations and made some sizeable profits.

In 2004 he bought “49P” for his company for £8,000, and sold it a couple of weeks ago for £85,000.

He also invested in the number plate “FLA 55H” – spelling ‘flash’ – a couple of years ago for £10,000, and it is currently up for sale at £25,000.

His favourite is “045” which he has on his car and is on sale for £110,000 more than double what he paid for it in 2020.

Jody Davies, of the DVLA said that plates including letters such as A and O are also very popular, and “Any with the numbers 1-99” are also in high demand.

Plates featuring common names command high prices and are more likely to hold their value because they are in short supply, reports MailOnline.

The DVLA sells number plates that have never been owned before and also takes requests for new combinations.

If your request is accepted, it is auctioned off by the DVLA and you can bid on it in one of the nine auctions they hold during the course of the year.

Registrations that align with certain trends such as celebrity names, films, football or new car models are also popular, and some combinations can command tens of thousands of pounds.

The number plate ‘DEV 1L’ was sold by the DVLA for £308,253 in 2021.

This is the registration that appeared on Cruella De Vil’s iconic car in the films 101 Dalmatians from 2016 and its sequel 102 Dalmatians.

The plate used in the films was only a prop, but it did go on to be issued.

According to sales company Regtransfers.co.uk, the owner of registration “I BNK” made a £66,100 profit in just seven years.

They bought it for £8,900 in 2014 and sold it on for £75,000 in 2021.

Lee Hill, 39, from Surrey says he invests in number players as he hates “having money sitting in the bank”.

A recent sale has seen him bank a £65,000 profit on a plate that he owned for just two weeks, and had one letter and one number.

Lee currently has 20 plates but he is not planning to sell them all as some have sentimental value.

He said: “I have ‘HII LEE’, which spells my full name. Both ’84 LEE’ and ‘LEE 84’ feature my year of birth.”