Aviation plate/tag

[Dave S]

Ohio has a small reference to the Birthplace of Aviation on their plates. NC plates display the words First in Flight in larger print and depict the first powered plane. Both states have had a friendly banter for years about where aviation started. The Wright brothers were born in Ohio and did much of their research there. After several years of testing and trials in NC, the plane they first flew was on the coast of North Carolina where the winds were more dependable. You pick where aviation began.

Because I’m a newbie, forum rules prevent me from posting a reply with an embedded link. So do a Google search for NC License Plate. Then scroll down a bit and view the images.

Current NC license plates are permanent, that is, they remain on the car indefinitely and are updated by annually affixing a new registration sticker on the upper right corner of the plate. The plates with blue letters tended to fade in a few years, so the Division of Motor Vehicles replaced them with plates with red letters. As I remember, we had to turn in the old (blue) plates to obtain a new one (red). So there aren’t many (or any) plates of the current iteration (red or blue) available that I know of. As such, I don't know where one would find an old, expired NC plate.

Years ago (prior to the 1980’s), new plates were issued annually and the previous year’s plate was discarded (or nailed to the side of a barn as many were). These old plates are around and many Cobra owners (myself included) display them on their cars. But they don’t have any reference to aviation; only the plate number and the year.

Another method would be to do an on-line search for NC replica license plates. There are several companies that produce custom (you pick the lettering) plates and many are available on EBay or Amazon.