The DVLA held their latest auction of personalized number plates on Wednesday 24th October through until Friday the s6th of October at the Down Hall Hotel , Bishop’s Stortford, Hertfordshire and continued to enjoy success in attracting bids from the public and dealers in the room , on-line , by telephone and by post.The DVLA are only allowed to auction registration numbers which have not been previously issued to a vehicle, they cannot auction numbers belonging to members of the public or registrations which no longer have the original vehicle in existence. Biggest success was the sale of WE57 HAM ( West Ham ) which brought Ј45,000 at the drop of the hammer being fueled by a bidding war amongst enthusiastic West Ham supporters , the winner was anonymous, having done his bidding over the internet.This beats the previous record for a football related plate as AR53 NAL fetched Ј36,000 in 2004. There was also a unique piece of memorabilia in the form of a framed “plate of greats” signed by 44 Hammers footballers including Sir Geoff Hurst MBA and Martin Peters MBE .This was auctioned for Ј1100 with the proceeds going to the Bobby Moore Fund for Cancer Research UK. Next highest sale was for the registration number 1 DAM at Ј25000 which did not seem excessive for such popular initials with the exclusivity of number one , then 78 G at Ј16000. The number 1 registrations continued in popularity with 1 WEE bringing Ј15,000,1 TAA brought the same amount and 1 RRJ brought Ј14,000. Some notable bargains were B111 DUF ( Bill Duff ) at Ј350 ,BER 3T at Ј450, LON 3R at Ј600 and DOU 99Y at Ј800 .Surprisingly high bids were made for CRA 19S ( Ј8,600 ) , SCR 44P (Ј8,600 ) and ALL 3X ( Ј9,000 ) .Some surprisingly unsold numbers were PAM 911S with a reserve of Ј500 ( maybe a Porsche 911S is not really a girl’s car? ) and RUM 5S with a reserve of only Ј400. Some of the more attractive novelty registration numbers were COO 1L at Ј7,500 , GOA 1S at 7,100 , CLU 8S at Ј8,700 and MU55 ELS at Ј5000. All prices are bids achieved on top of these figures the buyer would have paid an auctioneers commission , v.a.t. at 17.5% and an Ј80 D.O.T. transfer fee , this adds approximately 25% on top of the bid amount. Total income for the auction was in excess of Ј4 million plus vat of course and also an Ј80 transfer fee for each number is due ,bringing the total catch for the treasury to nearer Ј6 million. There is another auction planned for December 4th , 5th and 6th at Tankersley manor, Barnsley , South Yorkshire . This is probably going to be the last one for 2007 although there have been occasional special sales around Christmas in the past , but these have been for a small number of very exclusive numbers expected to bring huge bids. Free catalogues can be downloaded in PDF format from the DVLA sale of marks website , you can then pick which way you wish to bid and register for bidding at this sale. Alternatively you can view a full list of personalised number plates on offer in Excel or Adobe Flash format.