Winter License Plate Extravaganza (St. Petersburg, FL)

[Alex]

Jeff Francis' annual plate meet is on January 15-17 this year. I am planning on attending on Friday at least. The meet is held at Jeff's warehouse/museum in St. Pete, which is loaded with license plates and highway signs from all across the country. Some of his older signs are sometimes for sale, and other times vendors show up with signs for sale too.

Photos we took at last year's event are posted on FB at https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152174268742948.1073741838.181045197947&type=3
2010's plate meet: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.260642007947.141038.181045197947&type=3

If anyone else wants to go or make a minimeet out of it, I'd be interested in meeting up that Saturday. There are several area things in Tampa Bay to see roadwise, like the freewayization of US 19 in Pinellas and the ongoing work to upgrade I-275 in Tampa among other things.

http://licenseplates.cc/eventdetail.php?event=St-Petersburg-FL-01-15

[Alex]

Just got back from the plate show where I found several current issues I needed to complete my run (again) and a few others. I bought the 1969 NE official map too, which was one of three maps I saw there. Not a lot of signs for sale this year, but saw some on Jeff's wall I had not seen before (CA 238 for instance).

[Brian556]

What's the 411 on this museum? Where is it located? Is it open regularly to the public? I would like to visit it next time I am in FL.

[Alex]

What's the 411 on this museum? Where is it located? Is it open regularly to the public? I would like to visit it next time I am in FL.

Its privately owned. Jake knows the owner much better than I, so he probably can comment more on when he has it open outside of the annual license plate show. I know when Justin met him back in 2006, he offered to give him and me a personal tour of it.

[Alex]

So I went back again today and picked up a Pure Michigan license plate. It turned out the pile of signs I saw the day before were all for sale, so I bought a Business Loop I-15 shield from Jeff. Stuck around for a couple of hours and met some cool plate collectors while there too.

FYI, Jeff will be hosting another plate show in May.

[NJRoadfan]

Have any of the new flat plates from NJ entered circulation in the collector's market yet?

[signalman]

Have any of the new flat plates from NJ entered circulation in the collector's market yet?

I'm certain that they have.  New Jersey has a high turnover rate, and it's never a problem obtaining relatively new passenger plates for one's collection.

[Alps]

Have any of the new flat plates from NJ entered circulation in the collector's market yet?

I'm certain that they have.  New Jersey has a high turnover rate, and it's never a problem obtaining relatively new passenger plates for one's collection.

EBay search turns up nothing. It should take at least a year for these to make it out in any quantity, and I think there are a few months to go for that.

[oscar]

So I went back again today and picked up a Pure Michigan license plate. It turned out the pile of signs I saw the day before were all for sale, so I bought a Business Loop I-15 shield from Jeff. Stuck around for a couple of hours and met some cool plate collectors while there too.

FYI, Jeff will be hosting another plate show in May.

I'll also mention (for the May show, I should've mentioned it earlier) that Jeff is an early member of the Extra Miler Club (county-counters),  There's a good deal of overlap between EMC and the plate collector community.  So that's something else you can talk about with Jeff and some of the other plate collectors if you go to the May show.

[signalman]

Have any of the new flat plates from NJ entered circulation in the collector's market yet?

I'm certain that they have.  New Jersey has a high turnover rate, and it's never a problem obtaining relatively new passenger plates for one's collection.

EBay search turns up nothing. It should take at least a year for these to make it out in any quantity, and I think there are a few months to go for that.

I'm not surprised that there's none on ebay. Passenger plates have indeed been flat for less than a year; first ones were issued in April 2014.  Ebay has strict rules as to how long that the plate has to be expired before listing.  While I know that they're not stickered, it doesn't mean it isn't a deterent for a potential seller of said plate.  There are other ways for a NJ collector to obtain plates besides ebay, however.

I don't have any in my collection, nor have I tried to buy any (I personally don't like them, so I'm in no rush to add one to my collection).  Also, I collect samples, so I don't expect Trenton to have any available until at least next year.  They will likely exhaust their current inventory before making any of the new type in sample format.