Vanity Plate Sold for $14 Million in UAE

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — A license plate with nothing but the number "1" on it went for a record $14 million at a charity auction Saturday.

Saeed Khouri, a member of a wealthy Abu Dhabi family, wouldn't say how many automobiles he owned or which of them might carry the record-breaking single-digit plate.

"I bought it because it's the best number," said Khouri, whose family made its fortune in real estate. "I bought it because I want to be the best in the world."

The oil-rich UAE began auctioning off vanity license plates last May.

Ordinary automobile license plates issued to drivers here _ and even most other vanity series plates _ carry both Arabic and Western numerals and script, defining the issuing city and country.

Khouri's plate, however, has only the Western numeral and no letters.

The record sale surpassed the $6.8 million that was paid for an Emirati license plate at an earlier auction with the Western number 5 on it _ also without Arabic numerals or letters.

Proceeds from the auctions, which are held in a lavish hotel here, go to a rehabilitation center for victims of traffic accidents.

On Saturday, 90 license plates were auctioned off in all, raising a total of $24 million. The previous five such events raised more than $50 million.

Comments

[wheelskeepturning]

08:52 AM on 02/18/2008

Their women meann less than zero, but they are happy to fork over $14 million for a vanity plate. What does that tell you about the mentality of these men? Greed. At lease we can only hope for lessons learned from the past. Greed will get you what you want for a while but while you are caught up in all the over indulgence; it have will either be taken from you or no longer needed and then you will have nothing, only the sand! Maybe you can put that in your engines. The rest of the world will be far ahead of you again. Back to the camel for you!

[wheelskeepturning]

08:54 AM on 02/18/2008

p.s. Women aren't allowed to wear make-up but a man can have a "vanity" plate. Isn't that some kind of redundancy?

[localman]

06:04 PM on 02/17/2008

Once hyper inflation sets in here in America that's the same amount that our vanity plates will cost.

INFLT4U

[Dendroica]

04:27 PM on 02/17/2008

In the US we have vanity plates. In much of the world, their plates are assigned upon registering the vehicle, and you can't really get it unless the current owner gives/sells it to you.

So this isn't a VANITY plate, but a "registration plate."

[SouthJerseySteve]

03:50 PM on 02/17/2008

$14 million can feed a lot of hungry Muslims in the Middle East? I guess rich people in any culture believe the old saying... "F**k the Poor".

[bmermaid]

03:26 PM on 02/17/2008

Some of the money that they used to buy it used to be mine. That little tiny iota of that licence plate, the few hundred bucks I spent on gas last year, was not very much to them, but it was a lot to me.

[BigBagel]

03:23 PM on 02/17/2008

But I'm number one!