The Sioux City Journal reports, based on talks with the Woodbury County Treasurer, that Iowa’s license plates are indeed being replaced — but only the earliest ones. As far as replacements go, this is about as anticlimactic as you can get, aside from nothing at all.
The release says 1996-97, but the plates were handed out starting Jan. 2, 1997. People whose registrations expired in December 1996 could, and did, get the new ones if they waited to renew until January. These plates are old enough to get their own learner’s permits.
The sequences in question were the first of two sets issued to counties in substantial blocks. After the first two rounds, issuance came down to just one or two three-letter sets at a time for the small counties and maybe eight to ten for the larger ones, without any sequence other than “we’re out, send the next ones you have.” Each letter sequence has 1000 plates.
Plate 000AAA belongs to someone in Adair County. But in a twist, that won’t be among the replaced rolling stock yet — the press release says the reissue starts with May registrations. (That is likely when the sequential rollover will occur.)
By the way, 19 out of every 100 plates excluding the first 100 in a sequence have a zero in them, so if you want to avoid that ugly slash, your odds are about 4 in 5. Overall, with the first 100, the ratio then changes so 271 out of every 1000 plates have a zero.
If I had my way, each county in 1997 would have been allotted a total greater than the number of existing registrations in the county, but that didn’t happen. With this “rolling rollover”, that’s not really an option.
EDIT: Some bad math.