A telephone bid of £10,500 secured the glamorous MIL 2000 number plate at an auction in Northern Ireland yesterday. A local number plate dealer is rumoured to have bought it as a millennium present for his wife.
The auction of special number plates, conducted by Wilson's Auctions in Mullusk on behalf of Driver Vehicle Licensing Northern Ireland, attracted huge interest, with more than 200 bidders taking part.
Many of them came from Britain where no MIL 2000 plate can be bought, due to a different licensing prefix system.
Chief auctioneer Mr Ian Wilson said he was glad the MIL 2000 licence plate would be staying in Northern Ireland.
Demand for the 350 numbers on sale had been strong, he said. "I reckon the total value of the numbers we sold today was about £300,000," he said.
"Everyone seems to get carried away at these auctions." Several other registration numbers attracted heavy bidding, including PIL 1 which finally went for £5,900, HIL 5 which went for £5,500, and VAZ 1 which was sold for £5,000.
But yesterday's millennium auction failed to break the Northern Irish record price for a number plate, which stands at £28,280 for the registration OIL 1, also sold to a local buyer in May 1998.
A similar style of auction is not possible in the South, where number plates cannot be transferred between vehicles.
According to a spokesman for the Revenue Commissioners, the much sought-after 00-D-2000 number plate has already been assigned, at a cost of only £250. He said the last day for application for millennium registration numbers was November 1st, 1999, and because 27 people had applied for the same number, the lucky winner of the 00-D-2000 registration was drawn by lot.
In the Republic there were 99 applications for number plates with 2000 on them. Westmeath, with 21 applications, had the highest number outside Dublin.