By Doris Wedge
For the Transcript
Whether we call it a tag or a license plate, most of us find it easier to just get a new sticker each year when we update our vehicle registration. That's not the case for Dr. Franz Currier. He gets a new Oklahoma license plate every year, as one day it will be a collectible commodity.
Currier is a tag collector, with a collection that spans decades of research and acquisition. Much of his collection is tastefully displayed on walls in his home. He is a tag enthusiast who enjoys sharing the history of the evolution of tags and how history has impacted the piece of metal that individually identifies every car in the nation.
Chair of the OU Department of Orthodontics, Currier began his collection while a Michigan resident. He would get a tag every year and, like most people, would set the old one aside. As his interest grew, he realized "you can learn so much about history by studying license tags."
Car tags in the United States have always been a state-controlled matter "closely guarded because there is so much money involved," he explained, whether the license plates' fees are based on the weight of the car, or on the original value as they are in Oklahoma, whether they were permanent to the owner or stayed with the vehicle.
"States have two reasons for issuing license plates, the tax income, and for police identification," he said.
New York began requiring residents to register vehicles in 1901, but it was Massachusetts that began issuing license plates two years later. Oklahoma began issuing tags in 1915, and for a time had an "F" on the auto tag, which designated Ford, since most of the cars were Fords. Truck tags had a "T". Later, from 1936 to 1942, Oklahoma issued dual tags with the "F" standing for front, Currier says.
Over the years, the tags have been made from different materials, including aluminum and copper. During World War II, tags were even made of fiberboard. "Some states that issued two tags per car took one of the pair back for the war effort," he said. In early years, tags came in a variety of sizes and shapes, but the size was standardized in the 1950s. The galvanizing and reflective processes have revolutionized the car tag industry. While many think of car tag making as a prison industry, Currier says that was more prominent when tags were stamped, but it is no longer true.
Currier says license plate collectors take several approaches. Serious collectors collect "runs," sets in a numerical series, or tags from each state for a certain year. Of course it is fun, he says, to get a state's number one tag, a designation set aside each year for the governor, or the number one OU tag, a gift from President David Boren.
For collectors, plates are priced by rarity and by condition, with tags with fewer digits being most prized. Collectors look for "mint original" tags but sometimes settle for those showing lots of wear, or those having been restored. If the state issued both front and back tags that year, the collector pays a premium price for the set.
Currier holds membership number 3,798 in the National Automobile License Collectors Association, having joined in 1982, and the organization is now numbering memberships over 10,000, indicating that the interest in collecting license plates is rapidly growing.
Dr. Currier prizes his collection, which includes tags from the 48 contiguous states from 1924 on, and Hawaii and Alaska since statehood. To be a serious collector, "you have to know people," he says of the network he associates with through the NALCA. "I am not a materialist. I'm a collector. You have to be patient, and keep looking" to find items or runs worth investing in. "It is very rare to find a really good collectible tag at an antique store any more."
