NO TRUMP INAUGURAL LICENSE PLATES?

On Jan. 20, Mr. Trump will become America’s first president since Herbert Hoover to decline to produce special license plates for the vehicles in his inauguration parade, a change that has unnerved collectors who have spent decades trying to acquire a complete set.

The 45th president is instead expected to travel from the Capitol to the White House in an armored Cadillac limousine with the same District of Columbia plates in use now. Trump inaugural-committee spokesman Boris Epshteyn said there are “no plans” for special inaugural plates and none have been ordered. He declined to elaborate.

That is crushing for hard-core collectors like Charlie Gauthier, a retired National Highway Traffic Safety Administration executive who is one of just a few dozen to possess every inaugural plate issued.

On the wall of his home office in rural Fauquier County, Va., Mr. Gauthier has the rarest of presidential plates: Franklin Roosevelt’s 1933 inaugural—the first in which a president used special plates. There is also one from Dwight Eisenhower’s 1953 inauguration and autographed plates from Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

Greg Hunter, whose family has had the contract to produce inaugural plates since the 1980s, said he designed a plate with the Trump inaugural committee but the group has yet to place an order. Mr. Epshteyn, the Trump inaugural-committee spokesman, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

To print and deliver enough plates for the Trump inaugural parade would take at least three to four days, leaving the inaugural committee until the beginning of next week if it elects to make America’s plates again.

Presidential inaugurations generate an untold amount of memorabilia, from embossed tickets to buttons to hats. The inaugural license plates are unique, because for decades just a few hundred sets were produced.

The president’s limousine is issued a plate with the number 1 and the vice president gets number 2, making them the most valuable in collector circles. The rarest plates—from Roosevelt’s 1930s inaugurations—can sell for $4,000 to $12,000.

“This is considered the hardest collection to do,” said Bill Tuli, a Phoenix engineer and license-plate collector who completed his inaugural set last month. “And most of us collect weird things.” He also saves copies of Mad Magazine and vintage guitars.

There are just a couple dozen people who have complete sets of inaugural plates, said Andrew Pang, a collector from Arlington, Va., who helps others find rare plates using his website, licensepl8s.com.

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Donald Trump Declines to Issue Inaugural License Plates. Sad! (www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trump-declines-to-issue-inaugural-license-plates-sad-1484323647)

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