ALPCA Garden State Region

Last week we took a look at a 1978 New Jersey Passenger plate variant with the wide” W”. This week we look at a 1970s Prop “1959 Base” New Jersey Passenger plate.

In the early days of cinema, New Jersey played a major role in the development and production of motion pictures. However, that didn’t last too long.

By the 1970s the majority of film production took place in California where they faked everywhere from New York to Nepal. To disguise the fact they were filming in the part of California known as The Southland (a.k.a. Los Angeles and environs), they needed a great deal of fakery. Signs, license plates, police vehicles and such were produced by studio art departments and prop houses to make the Golden State pass for places like the Garden State.

This prop plate is typical of many produced in the 1970s. The serial “dies” don’t really replicate any state and like the state and slogan “dies” have appeared on prop plates representing various states, provinces and other countries. So this prop plate really doesn’t do that good a job in replicating a 1959 base New Jersey plate, but it was close enough for Hollywood of the 1970s.

If you have a plate you would like featured as a Plate of the Week, please contact us or put a photo of the plate in our flickr group and drop us a line.

Last week we took a look at a 2002 Virginia vanity plate that stealthily celebrates the largest city in the Garden State. This week we look at a 1978 New Jersey Passenger plate.

At first glance, this appears to be just another 1977 base New Jersey passenger plate, but look closer.

The dies used on many plates in the I, J and K series have the  state name dies found on the Historic plates, which were one of the first plates to actually spell out the name of the state in 1964. As you can see below, their most noticeable feature is a wider W compared to the 1977 passenger plates.

Interestingly enough, the Historic plates that were produced concurrently with the 1977 base passenger plates used the same dies with the noticeably narrower W. The narrower W dies were also used on the 1979 base where New Jersey was spelled out.

So the last hurrah for the wide W dies was on these sporadically appearing passenger plates until the switchover to the buff on blue 1979 base plates.

If you have a plate you would like featured as a Plate of the Week, please contact us or put a photo of the plate in our flickr group and drop us a line.

From Dave Mackey via Jim Moini:

New Format New Jersey License Plate, photo courtesy of Dave Mackey

Last week we took a look at a 1992 Handicapped Remake. This week we look at a 2002 Virginia vanity plate that stealthily celebrates the largest city in the Garden State.

In “I’m From New Jersey” John Gorka sings, “I’m from New Jersey, it’s not like Texas, there is no mystery, I can’t pretend. . .” However, there is a great deal of mystery to how this plate celebrating a zip code in Newark came to be. We can’t solve that one, but we can tell you the story of this plate after it left the hands of a displaced Newark loving New Jerseyan south of the Mason-Dixon line.

It came to us via David Nicholson who found it on a junked minivan in a Maine junkyard. It languished in his trade pile for some time until we recognized its incredible brilliance.

If you have a plate you would like featured as a Plate of the Week, please contact us or put a photo of the plate in our flickr group and drop us a line.

Last week we told the tale of how we got thea 1997 New York Press sample that we got in 2005 through some more dumb luck in Trenton. This week we look at a 1992 Handicapped Remake.

Since at least the days of the 1959 base plate, New Jersey has been issuing remakes of old numbers on new plates for the owner of that plate, usually when the plate is damaged. This means you can see a circa 1959 number on a brand new pair of plates. And passenger plates aren’t the only ones getting remade.

This week’s plate of the week is an example of that. At first glance it seems like just another typical 1992 onwards handicapped plate. However, a closer inspection reveals it is not. The plate number is a circa 1985 one, which would have been issued on the blue on buff 1979 base.

The moral of the story?
Knowledge is quite important when collecting plates, since you might not otherwise notice a special plate among the common ones.

If you have a plate you would like featured as a Plate of the Week, please contact us or put a photo of the plate in our flickr group and drop us a line.