California License Plate Sticker Colors

Example:[Collected via e-mail, April 2009]

Dec 05, 2018 License Plate Sticker Colours, Part 2: 1979-1998. Over half the jurisdictions in the U.S. And Canada were issuing multi-year baseplates and plate stickers by 1970. By 1982, all states and provinces were following suit.aside from New York and New Jersey, which used windshield stickers instead. This item California US USA License Plate Number Plate Embossed Custom Boxes for Dates Stickers Black (Boxes for Dates & Stickers) Antique Retro California State Auto Tag Official 1950s 1960s 1970s Vintage Replica CA License Plate Any Text!

Yet another dirty trick foisted on legitimate drivers:

While my car was in to have the front brakes renewed on Friday March 27th, one of the mechanics commented that someone had stolen my sticker. When I asked what he was talking about, he took me to the back of the car to show me where someone had removed my newly applied February 2010 vehicle validation sticker.

Most of us simply clean off the surface of the previous sticker and put the new one on top of it. That way, all a thief has to do is to pry off the layered stack, clean up the back and glue your sticker onto their license plate, or worse, sell it to someone else to apply it to theirs. This allows them to avoid the need to bother about paying for an Emissions Test, paying the renewal fee of $74.00, or the new “Miller” private vehicle tax (only in Toronto) and, by extension, probably drive uninsured. Next year they will simply repeat the process with another stolen sticker. Unless they are stopped by the police for some reason and the ownership validation sticker number is checked against the number on the sticker on the license plate, they may well get away with it for years.

On Monday I went to the Ministry of Transportation to obtain my new sticker; they indicated that this is quite common. The replacement cost was $7.00 — once again the victim takes the hit.

This time I scraped the sticker location completely clean of old stickers, washed the site with lighter fluid, and then applied the new one and rubbed it down well.

The lady that served us indicated that once the site is cleaned off and the new sticker is applied and well rubbed down, if you take a sharp Exacto knife or something similar and score lines vertically and horizontally across the sticker, it guarantees that it can only be removed in small, useless pieces. This tip came from a customer who had been hit, as we were. Our new sticker is now in place and well scored. Incidentally, as the license plate is aluminum, there is no risk of rusting due to the scoring.

Whenever you replace your validation sticker my advice is to completely remove all traces of the old sticker(s) and follow the process above. At least then the thief will steal someone else’s sticker.

Please advise your friends and relatives. Note: While this happened in Toronto, it could happen anywhere in the province or for that matter anywhere that uses a similar validation sticker.

As for the thieves, while having up-to-date validation stickers on their vehicles might keep them from being pulled over for not displaying proof of current registration, it won’t help them if police ever have cause to “run the plates”; that is, query the police database for more information about the vehicle they’ve stopped by entering the plate number in their computer. At that point, the unregistered state of the car will make itself known when the plates show as expired. Police as a matter of policy run plates when they stop vehicles they suspect have committed traffic violations, but they also often query the plates of cars around them as they drive along, as well as those of disabled vehicles pulled off to the side of the road. In other words, as little as getting a flat tire or having a police cruiser pull into the lane next to them can be all it takes to land the miscreants in hot water.

So, while there is some small reason to fear your vehicle license registration sticker might get stolen, given the small cost of replacing it you need not feel inspired to engage in wildly protective measures to safeguard that item. Also, given how easily the ruse of putting a live sticker on a dead plate is exposed, you likewise needn’t necessarily fear that any thief who did take your sticker is truly going to get away scot-free.

California License Plate Template

Barbara “sticker stickler” Mikkelson

Additional information:

California License Plate Sticker Colors By Year

Validation Sticker Renewal (Ontario Ministry of Transportation)

Personal Vehicle Tax FAQ (Service Ontario)

California License Plate Template

California License Plate Sticker Colors By Year

California 2020 Registration Sticker