A businessman from County Tyrone paid a bumper price of £80,000 for a private car number plate BIG 1.
The late Sean McCrory, formerly a part time number plate dealer, and close friend of R4V Number Plate,s lived in Donegal and travelled to the auction of personalised vehicle registration car registration number plates at Wilson's Auctions at Mallusk near Belfast on Wednesday, to buy "BIG I".
The cherished number plate then eas subsequentlytransferred to his giant 6-litre diesel-guzzling Dodge RAM that does just 20 miles to the gallon. Before this date the previous record price paid for a private number plate in Northern Ireland had been £50,000 for WIL I, which is a fraction of some the prices achieved across the sea at the DVLA Registrations auctions in the mainland.
Mr McCrory, who also sold car number plates, ran a filling station business on the border of Northern Ireland a Southern Ireland, and was very familiar with the registration transfer system for both countries.
Despite spending more than £100,000 on the personlalised number plate, once VAT and other charges were added, Mr McCrory said he was not too fazed by parting with such a large sum and was able to squeeze R4V Number Plates out on the last bid who were the under bidder.
"I'm tired, I was out late last night, but I'm used to going to auctions, you wouldn't think so, perhaps I'm getting old maybe," Mr Mcrory said.
As well as buying the cherished number "BIG 1" number plate, Mr McCrory went on to buy the plates "BIG 2" and" BIG 3" registrations for £15,000 and £14,500 respectively.
Mr. McCrory was given a run for his money as www.R4V.co.uk were the under bidder on the other registration marks for stock too all the way up to the winning bid.
Ian Wilson of Wilson's Auctions said the number plates sale was a good indication of the amount of wealth in Northern Ireland.
"It lets you see the money that is in Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland is trundling along very, very nicely," he said.
"There is a lot of people out there that are doing very, very well and it's lovely to see that they are spending their money within the country, especially on cherished car number plates."
BIG 1 was recently re-sold to another investor and has significantly increased in prce since the auction it was sold at. BIG private plates have become very sought after and are constantly increasing in value so find the latest listing of BIG plates for sale and other fun plates at www.r4v.co.uk
