Alaska Grizzly Bear Plate
2015–presentAlaska · current
Offered alongside the gold plate since 2015 at no extra cost, and it outsells it. A grizzly stands upright against mountains and a sunset, the serial stamped across in red, no slogan anywhere. It is the more honest advertisement of the two: Alaska sells the animal, not the phrase. The plate shown is a reconstruction carrying an invented serial, so no real registration is depicted.
Still on the road
This is a current issue, first seen in 2015 and still being handed out. Nothing about it is settled history: the serial sequence is still advancing, and the design will only stop where the state decides to replace it.
Half stamped, half printed
Run a thumb across this plate and only the serial answers. The registration is still pressed into the metal the old way, while the state name, the slogan and any artwork are printed flat onto the reflective sheeting around it. Most plates issued in America today are made like this: the part that must be legible at speed and survive a decade of weather is stamped, and the part that carries the state's personality is printed, because printing can do colour and detail that a press cannot.
Sources
Reference photograph of an issued plate. No image of this design exists on Wikimedia Commons (All rights reserved, cited not reproduced, Jack and Petra Clayton). Issue date and serial format (CC BY-SA).
- Issued
- Standard issue
- The plate you received by default when you registered a vehicle.
- Serial format
- AAA 999
- Material
- Aluminium: stamped serial on screened reflective sheeting
- Source license
- All rights reserved, cited not reproduced
- Reference
- View original