New York Excelsior Plate
2020–presentNew York · current · “Excelsior”
New York put five designs to a public vote in 2019 and this one won, taking the state motto as its slogan: Excelsior, ever upward, adopted in 1778. The band along the foot runs the whole state west to east, Niagara to Montauk, with the Adirondacks and the city in between. It replaced the Empire Gold plate in 2020, and that one is gone rather than optional. 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 2020 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 from a collector listing. Wikimedia Commons holds no photograph of this design at all (All rights reserved, cited not reproduced). Issue date, the 2019 public vote, serial format, and that the previous base was withdrawn rather than kept as an option (CC BY-SA).
- Issued
- Standard issue
- The plate you received by default when you registered a vehicle.
- Serial format
- AAA-9999
- Material
- Aluminium: stamped serial on screened reflective sheeting
- Source license
- All rights reserved, cited not reproduced
- Reference
- View original