Montana Centennial Plate
2012–presentMontana · current · “100 Years”
Montana turned a hundred in 1989 and marked it with this plate, which is now orderable again as a standard issue thirty-odd years later. It is the only one of the five that carries no county number, so unlike every other Montana plate it will not tell you where its owner lives. 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 2012 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 (CC BY-SA 4.0, Cmhudda). The statutory rule allowing any design first issued in 1989 or later, and that this design carries no county number (CC BY-SA).
- Issued
- Standard issue
- The plate you received by default when you registered a vehicle.
- Serial format
- AAA999
- Material
- Flat aluminium, printed on reflective sheeting
- Source license
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Reference
- View original