Sadly, these are not reserved for sheep owners.
It took six months to get through the new A’s. Why so long? Two likely explanations:
- Anyone with an April through September or October registration (along with late March renewers) who still had an original 1997 license plate (000AAA through the early F’s) regardless of vehicle age got a replacement in the late Y’s and Z’s last year before the rollover, which occurred in mid-October.
- This year the 1998-2003 plates are being replaced, and by this time, there may just be fewer original plates left around than you (I) might think. New vehicle registrations also get the new B’s unless the owner is holding on to a later-alphabet plate.
The letter sequence may be slowed down in the future because the full alphabet is being used in the second and third positions, at least so far. This only happened the first time around in 1997, and still skipped the D’s entirely.
(I have renamed the title of updates starting with this one because I don’t want to give any wrong impressions.)