California Black Plate Letter Sequence

[Jon Schmid]

I have "Stale Air's" posting on my desktop, which is why I was able to answer Mr. Richey's original question the way I did. It also confirms what I already knew, that the plate on my Roadster is an original '63 issue since the letter sequence is "IEC" and we lived in the Santa Ana DMV zone at the time so it was part of their allocation bloc. Plus, it has the number 63 stamped in the upper right hand corner.

[Mike Wilson]

Interesting in the fact that the original owner of my car lived in Santa Ana as well. It's too bad that there are no records of the original plate number, though.

[Jim Alton]

But, they all have "63" stamped in the corner, just like all the yellow plates have an embossed "56" for the year the plate was to be used without a sticker.

There may be a few black plates with no "63" possibly because the dies wore down.

[Jon Schmid]

Interesting. The '67 B/Y plates that were original issues to my old Mustang (I have the plates but sadly, the car is gone) have the 63 stamping. The '69 non original issue B/Y plates on my coupe do not--not even a trace.

[Jim Alton]

Or, maybe Folsom Prison eventually decided to omit a step (stamping "63") when it no longer mattered. The "SMH" plates on my VW should date from 1966 and they have "63" in the upper right-hand corner.

[Mike Wilson]

So in 1964, starting with RDB, where did the rest of the plates go? Did they all come from Sacramento to the various cities after that in random order?