I collect license plates and I plan on taking a few with me to Paris on June 18 to trade. In the US you can find plates at most car dealerships but I'm not sure if that's true in Europe.

This is a long shot here on FT but I thought I post and see what happens.

Thanks in advance,
Dudemon

Dudemon: I don't know much about this subject, but I did find a French web site called "Francoplaque":

"You're on one of the first French License Plate sites. Compared to thousands of collectors in the USA and Canada, we are still a few dozens in France. And of course, we are ready to trade French plates for any other plates !"

In English:

http://plaque.free.fr/index-english.html

Contacts:

http://plaque.free.fr/contacts-english.html

All of the contacts have email addresses and perhaps one of them could send you in the right direction for your visit. Good luck!

I don't know about France. In Germany I would go to the place where you register a car "Kfz-Zulassungstelle". Next to this places you find shops which "print" the plates. You get old ones from their dumpster for free, and they "print" you any you like for a couple of Euros.

If you'll be in Paris on the weekend or Monday, I would expect you could find old license plates at the flea market in St-Ouen (http://www.parispuces.com/). There are leventy-seven gazillion stalls selling virtually anything used (and new). It's in tyhe north edge of the city, at metro stops Porte de Clignancourt or Garibaldi.

Just like American license plates, French ones are not associated for a lifetime with their owner (Belgium and Switzerland) or a vehicle (Spain), meaning there must be many decommissioned license plates around.

French license plates are made by the private sector, explaining the many variations seen on French roads, from the handwritten ones on old 2CV's, to the ones used a large unnamed corporation with subtle differences informing security guards to let the vehicle through.

These days the formats are regulated, with some leeway left for spacing between digits. From what I hear though, one can get away with some deviations.

This should make for it all the more interesting for a foreign collector. Some special plates include the orange-on-green diplomatic plates, silver-on-red tax-free ones, etc.

Car parts shop and shoe-repair/key shops all make and sell new license plates, I suppose upon provision of government-issued registration papers.