Merrittonians will get a chance to look at the history of the province through the lens of licence plates starting Sunday, when local collector Don Schneider opens up his private collection of B.C. plates to the public.
The long-time Merrittonian began collecting about 30 years ago as an affordable alternative to collecting vintage cars.
After early days of collecting by searching through wrecking yards, he joined a club for licence plate collectors and since the advent of eBay, his collection has exploded to more than 1,200 plates.
The collection spans more than a century and the entire colour spectrum.
“When you see them, you’d be really amazed about all the different colours we used to have,” he said.
His oldest plate — and the pride of his collection — is a leather one.
That was common in the early 1900s after the province introduced its requirement for automobiles to display their registration numbers in 1904.
Each vehicle owner was responsible for creating the plate in those days, and leather was readily available.
As vehicle popularity increased, the province began manufacturing porcelain plates in 1913.
When the war years hit, B.C. switched to a lighter, tin version of its licence plates.
After the war, shortages of various materials posed a new challenge to the province, which introduced the idea of the renewal tab.
The tab sits on the side of the plate with the registration number and the year of issue, so only the tab had to be updated each year while the base plate stayed the same.
The 1952 B.C. licence plate had some unique features, including the egg-shaped zeros on this sample plate and the totem pole and maple leaf design. Emily Wessel/Herald
Sample plates were produced for law enforcement purposes beginning in the 1920s with just zeros on them. B.C.’s sample plates have an egg-shaped zero, something Schneider says is unique.
“They’d send one to the adjacent province and state so they knew what was a legal one in B.C.,” Schneider said. “They became quite collectible later on.”
The lower the number, the earlier the licence plate was issued — thus, the more sought-after the plate, Schneider said.
As vehicles became more ingrained in B.C. life, different licence plates were issued to denote different vehicle classes and uses.
Various cities also issued bicycle licence plates in different shapes, sizes and colour schemes.
Doctors got their own licence plate denotation in the 1930s.
“They stopped it in ’43 because too many doctors were getting held up for their morphine,” he said.
The province began manufacturing commercial plates in 1935.
Schneider has the only known full trailer plate collection, and a variety of early triangular public works plates, he said.
More material shortages during the Great Depression and later during the Second World War meant a pared-down look to many of those years’ plates.
In the 1940s, as more than 100,000 vehicles were registered per year, the province began adding a letter prefix to registration numbers for passenger vehicles.
Come the early 1950s, the country had mostly rebounded from the war years and the short-lived totem pole-emblazoned aluminum licence plate made its first appearance — and its last in 1954.
The late 1950s and early ’60s introduced some interesting colour schemes to licence plates, which had previously been quite muted.
Schneider’s display features some of the pink-and-red and turquoise-and-maroon plates popular then.
The first time the word “beautiful” appears on the B.C. licence plate is 1964.
In 1970, the province began its new alpha-numeric system with three letters and three digits.
That was also the first year the province began using decals to mark the year on the plates rather than stamp the year directly onto the plate.
The province’s flag made its first appearance in 1986, just in time for Expo 86 in Vancouver.
“It’s a learning experience, and it still is for me,” Schneider said of his collecting hobby.
To set up a viewing between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m., call Schneider at 378-6421.
Admission is by donation.
