West Virginia Wild Wonderful Plate
2023–presentWest Virginia · current · “Wild Wonderful”
Gold on navy at the head, WILD WONDERFUL along the foot with no comma between the words, and the outline of the state standing between the two halves of the serial. The first character encodes the month the registration expires, digits one to nine for January to September and the letters O, N and D for the last three months of the year. 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 2023 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 of the immediately preceding base, which differs from this design only in its separator and serial length. The state publishes artwork with a placeholder serial (Public domain). Issue date and the month-coded serial format (CC BY-SA).
- Issued
- Standard issue
- The plate you received by default when you registered a vehicle.
- Serial format
- A99 999A
- Material
- Aluminium: stamped serial on screened reflective sheeting
- Source license
- Public domain
- Reference
- View original