150 plates popular, still behind Vegas, Tahoe

There are now nearly 11,000 Nevada Sesquicentennial license plates on the road, making the plate honoring the state’s 150th anniversary of statehood one of the most popular in DMV’s inventory.

The dark blue plate with a full-color state seal has proven extremely popular.

But according to the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles, that plate has a long way to go to become the most popular designer plate among Nevada drivers.

Far and away the most popular specialty plate is the Las Vegas commemorative plate. A total of 85,700 Nevadans have chosen to put that plate on their car, truck or motorcycle.

That’s almost eight times the number of dark blue “Nevada 150” plates, which currently adorn 10,795 vehicles.

Nor is the Las Vegas plate the only designer plate with more supporters.

Second to Las Vegas is the Lake Tahoe plate, which is sported by 17,389 vehicles, including 91 motorcycles.

Third is the “United We Stand” plate on 16,768 vehicles.

With dramatic advancements in printing technology and the use of “flat plates” instead of the embossed plates that require special and now obsolete printing presses, more states — including Nevada — are able to offer a much wider variety of license plates for those who want to support a given cause.

Nevada currently has a total of 46 different specialty license plates in its inventory. But per state law, DMV only offers 25-30 of them at any one time. To be on that list of offerings, each plate must have at least 1,000 active plates.

The state began offering the “Nevada 150” Sesquicentennial plates in July, 2013 as the governor and others urged vehicle owners to show their pride in Nevada’s 150th birthday as a state.

The smallest number of active plates in a given design are for the newly minted plates honoring police officers — just 51 active plates — and those for fallen military members with just 16 plates out there.

There is another special plate available to Gold Star families who have lost someone in military service. A total of 175 have been issued thus far.

Many of the specialty plates were sought by groups advancing a cause such as the Virginia & Truckee Railroad reconstruction with 1,260 plates and the Health Centers plate advocating breast cancer awareness with 1,784 active plates.

Horse Power, the plate supporting protection of Nevada’s wild and free ranging horses and burros, has 5,756 supporters and a plate supporting the clearinghouse for missing and exploited children has 3,514 supporters.

The plate proclaiming the vehicle’s driver a Professional Fire Fighter has been issued to 2,839 vehicle owners.

Beyond that, there are numerous other plates available to special groups, including veterans, disabled veterans, female veterans, purple heart holders and those who have received the Congressional Medal of Honor.

All of the specialty plates require an initial payment ranging from $10 to $61 over and above the normal registration fee and an annual fee of $10-$30 to keep the plate.

The money generated by those fees generally goes to the cause the plate is designed to support.

In the case of the “Nevada 150” plate, a spokesman said those fees have generated more than $320,000 in revenue to support the sesquicentennial celebration.

Likewise, the cash generated by the Lake Tahoe plate goes to support environmental work in the Tahoe Basin.