Number Plate Auction Results — Week Ending 12 August 2026 | The Plate Ledger

Some weeks the market makes the Ledger's argument for it. This was one of them. Four Victorian plates sold across Plater and Trading Garage for a combined $203,872 all-in — and every single one was a heritage plate. No signatures, no customs, just the original numeric series doing what it does best.

As always, every figure below is the all-in price: hammer plus the auction house's buyer's premium. That's what the winning bidder actually paid, and it's the only number that matters when you're tracking plates as assets.

 

The headline: '25-000' cracks six figures

A five-digit Victorian heritage plate, '25-000', hammered at $95,000 on Trading Garage. With the 8.8% buyer's premium, the all-in lands at $103,360 — comfortably the week's top result and a clean demonstration of the pattern premium in action.

Look at why it commanded that price. A low leading pair ('25') followed by a triple-zero ('000') is exactly the kind of clean, memorable structure the market pays up for. Triple-zero endings have consistently outperformed their digit count in these recaps, and paired with a low, tidy opening, '25-000' had everything collectors chase in a five-digit heritage plate. Six figures for a five-digit plate is the pattern rule at full force.

 

The pattern statement: '133-333'

 

If '25-000' was the top result, '133-333' at $64,607.50 all-in was the most visually striking. A near-total repeat — a single leading '1' followed by five near-identical digits reading '33-333' — is the sort of plate that stops people in a car park. It's the definition of a pattern plate, and the market rewarded it accordingly. Two plates, two different repeating structures, both clearing well beyond what a plain six-digit combination of the same length would fetch.

Together, '25-000' and '133-333' are about as clear a proof as the Ledger has published: in heritage numerics, structure is the price. Two plates with ordinary digit counts, lifted into the tens and hundreds of thousands purely by the shape of their combinations.

 

The rest of the board

'169-889' at $19,040 all-in and '208082' at $16,864 are both solid six-digit heritage results in the tier below the headline lots. Neither carries the dramatic repeating structure of the top two, but both are clean, genuine heritage combinations that landed right where well-formed six-digit plates have been trading. They're a useful reminder of the baseline: ordinary six-digit heritage sits in the mid-teens to low-twenties all-in, and it's pattern that lifts a plate from that baseline into six figures.

 

Week snapshot

• Lots sold: 4 (Trading Garage 3, Plater 1)
• Total hammer: $188,100
• Total all-in: $203,871.50
• Top lot: '25-000' — $103,360 all-in
• Story of the week: a pure heritage board, with pattern plates leading the way

 

How we calculate all-in pricing

The Plate Ledger always reports the full purchase cost, not the headline hammer.

Trading Garage: buyer's premium of 8.8%, capped at $16,000, with a minimum premium of $1,000 applying to every lot. This week all three Trading Garage lots paid the standard 8.8%.

Plater: buyer's premium of 7.5% (inclusive of GST), capped at $15,000, with a minimum of $400 below $10,000 hammer and $1,000 above. '133-333' paid the standard 7.5% ($4,507.50).

 

Protecting the asset

A week where a five-digit plate clears $103,000 makes the point better than we can. When a plate is worth more than most of the cars it could be bolted to, the hardware holding it stops being an afterthought — it's protecting a six-figure asset.

Browse our Victorian heritage mounts — dedicated brackets for 3-digit, 4-digit, 5-digit and 6-digit plates, precision-cut in Melbourne and fitted using your car's existing factory mounting points. Wondering what your own plate might be worth? See our guide to how Australian number plate values work.

The Plate Ledger is FLX's weekly record of Australian number plate auction results. All prices include buyer's premium. Results compiled from publicly listed auction outcomes; figures may be rounded by the auction houses.