Some very ostentatious showcases of wealth are coming to a Hong Kong street near you, following the government’s latest round of personalized car plate auction.
According to the Transport Department, “1LOVE HK,” “PLZ,” “PASTRY” and “SU1T UP” were among the license plates that were snapped up at the Sunday auction, held at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center in Wan Chai.
The priciest plate, “GU”—as in the Japanese fashion brand that’s a sister company of Uniqlo—went for a winning bid of HK$510,000 (US$65,721).
“BOSS 888” netted the second-highest bid at HK$180,000 (US$23,200).
Read more: EG0MAN1AC: Hong Kong’s personalized license plate auction is back
Other auctioned plates of note include “LOWKEY” and “TR4VLING,” perhaps a tribute to a bygone, pre-COVID era.
Personalized license plates in Hong Kong are as much an in-your-face display of power and status as they are a jab at tongue-in-cheek humor.
To apply for a vanity plate, applicants have to first make an online enquiry to ensure their proposed PVRM—short for personalized vehicle registration mark—meets the requirements set out by the Transport Department. PVRMs cannot include the letters “I,” “O” and “Q,” and there cannot be more than four of the same characters placed consecutively.
Something’s not quite right… pic.twitter.com/5f2AsqatSd
— Richard Lai (@richardlai) April 21, 2021
Personalized car plate auctions are held in Hong Kong multiple times a year, though they were put on pause in 2020 due to COVID-19.
During an auction last month, an anonymous bidder splurged HK$26 million (US$3.4 million) on a vanity plate that reads “W.”
