Arkansas Diamond Plate
2006–presentArkansas · current · “The Natural State”
The diamond is not a flourish. Arkansas holds the only diamond mine in the United States open to the public, at Murfreesboro, where the state lets visitors keep whatever they dig up, and the stone cut into the middle of this plate is that. THE NATURAL STATE is printed in dark red along the foot. Arkansas stopped replacing plates on a fixed cycle in 2020, so a plate first issued in 2006 can still be the current registration on a car today. 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 2006 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. It carries the 2006 to 2021 serial format on identical artwork (CC0, SuperSonic337). Issue date and the 2021 change of serial format (CC BY-SA).
- Issued
- Standard issue
- The plate you received by default when you registered a vehicle.
- Serial format
- AAA 99A
- Material
- Aluminium: stamped serial on screened reflective sheeting
- Source license
- CC0
- Reference
- View original