Arizona Desert Scene Plate
2008–presentArizona · current · “Grand Canyon State”
A sunset over the Four Peaks with a saguaro standing beside the serial, from a 1996 design by Walter Punzmann that Arizona has kept for thirty years and merely stopped embossing in 2008. The cactus is not decoration: it marks the plate as a passenger issue, and Arizona's other plate types drop it. Serials are not handed out in order, so a plate tells you nothing about when it was issued. 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 2008 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.
Printed, not stamped
This plate is smooth. The design is printed onto flat reflective sheeting rather than pressed into the metal. It is what makes photographic backgrounds and fine detail possible at all, and it is the reason a modern plate feels like a sign where an older one feels like a stamping.
Sources
Reference photograph of an issued plate from a collector listing. Wikipedia's rows for this design carry no image at all (All rights reserved, cited not reproduced). Issue date, serial format and the move from embossed to flat in 2008 (CC BY-SA).
- Issued
- Standard issue
- The plate you received by default when you registered a vehicle.
- Serial format
- AAA 9AA
- Material
- Flat aluminium, screen-printed on reflective sheeting
- Source license
- All rights reserved, cited not reproduced
- Reference
- View original