Collectible Michigan License Plates
Antique Michigan license plates can be fun to collect due to the huge range of color combinations they exhibited over the 20th century. If you're looking for Michigan license plates for sale, it can be useful to get a little historical context first.
What are the major eras of Michigan License plate design?Vintage Michigan license plates for sale can easily be sorted into distinct historical periods:
- 1903–1909 - Before standardized plates, Michigan issued round metal vehicle registrations displayed on the dashboard or hung from the rear-view mirror. Regular license plates were required as well, but these were homemade, displaying the owner's house number and "MICH" on wood, leather or rubber.
- 1910–1914 - The first standardized plates were made of porcelain, with serial numbers of one to five digits, issued in different color combinations every year.
- 1915–1983 - Michigan license plates changed to embossed metal but continued the color rotation. An initial letter was added to the number sequence during some years, while in others the serial number was instead increased to six or seven digits. From 1940 onward every plate's serial began with two letters followed by four digits, changing to three of each in 1970. In 1954, a white border was added which persisted until 1983, and from 1971 onward, the serial was painted a reflective white. In 1982 and 1983 the digits preceded the letters in the serial sequence.
- 1983–2007 - The rotating color pattern is abandoned for a reflective white serial on blue. The numbers precede the letters in the serial from 1983–1990, though they switched back with a fourth digit added in 2004.
- Recent plates - Since 2007, Michigan plates have a blue serial on reflective white. Until April 2013, this included a blue band on top, and since then has a wavy blue band on the bottom. With this change, the simple "Michigan" at the top changed to the "PureMichigan" logo.
The only constant to the sequence of colors on the 1910–1983 rotating plates is that the background color was never the same twice in a row (with one exception: the white on olive green 1942 Michigan license plate, identical to 1943). The serial sometimes changed each year, sometimes remained the same color for up to four years in a row, and used a much smaller range of colors than the background.
The pattern changed every year until 1970, with a few exceptions. The 1964 Michigan license plate is green on white, just like the preceding three years, and 1959–61 are all yellow on green. From 1971 to 1983 the serial was always white and the background only changed five times.
What slogans appeared on old Michigan license plates?The rise in Michigan's tourist industry led to the introduction of license plate slogans. The 1954 Michigan license plate introduced the first one: "Water Wonderland," which appeared on plates for a decade. In 1965 this changed to "Water-Winter Wonderland," then "Great Lake State" in 1968, which held steady until 1983.
The most collectible Michigan license plate is definitely that of 1976, which the Automobile License Plate Collectors Association awarded "Plate of the Year." Instead of a slogan it features stars and stripes against a background that's both red and blue. It was so good they didn't even issues new plates in 1977 and 1978, instead revalidating 1976 plates with stickers.
During the white-on-blue years Michigan plates simply said "Great Lakes," replaced by "www.Michigan.gov" in 2007 and "michigan.org" in 2013.
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