Some people collect stamps. I collect “vanity plates,” vehicle tags where someone’s gone to the trouble of selecting certain letters and numbers for the state to hang on their car or truck for public display. I don’t rip off the plates themselves, of course, but I do take a picture when I encounter a choice example (traffic permitting).

What good is a collection if you can’t show it off, right? Here’s a selection from my collection for your inspection:

	on a well-used SUV
	on an EV

Now for the science-y part, about that map. On a recent trip to Texas I noticed that nearly every car there wore a boring default 3‑letter, 3‑digit mix — far fewer vanity plates than I normally see back home. I wondered if this was a Freakonomics effect. To test that hypothesis I pulled down vehicle registration data from carregistrationfee.com. Registration costs vary widely from state to state and may depend on engine size or horsepower, vehicle class, weight, wheelbase, depreciated value, … you get the idea. Then counties and cities can use their own rules to figure their cut.

In every state, though, there’s an extra fee for customizing your plate with your personal choice of letters and numbers (within limits). The charge for renewing a personalized plate is sometimes less than the first-year price so to equalize matters I calculated three-year totals. The average hit was $114.74, close to the median of $105.00. However, the range was impressive: $29.00 up to $585.00. The map shows where the heaviest levy falls and how far away it is from everyone else:

So, yeah, Freakonomic hypothesis confirmed — what you tax the most you get the least of.

~ Rich Olcott