Cherished Number Plates and Cherished Numbers
Cherished Numbers or Cherished Number Plates are the original terms first used to describe a vehicle registration number which had been bought to differentiate the car from all others on the road.It spawned the phrase "Cherished Number Dealer" which is still in use today.
Times have moved on since the early days when cherished registration numbers were the preserve of only the rich and famous but the two terms still remain and are now used to give a kind of ranking system to the array of registrations it is possible to buy.
Since the introduction of Select Registrations from the DVLA there has been a kind of class system to private number plates with cheap and cheerful registrations available from DVLA at the lower end and traditional cherished numbers such as 1 AEF at the higher end.
There is of course some overlap with some newstyle 7 digit numbers bringing huge amounts such as MR51 NGH which clearly spell a name or a word. Also many ageless registration numbers are bought purely to hide the age of the vehicle, these tend to have letters which would be unlikely initials such as X or Y. Although technically cherished number plates their price is similar to a entry level DVLA registration.