You might not think about license plates too often. Maybe just at the DMV or while entertaining kids on a long road trip. But earlier this month, I spent the morning with one group of people who can’t stop thinking about those metal rectangles.

The parking lot of St. Michael’s Catholic Church is full of vehicles with great vanity plates like “TAGS4U” and obscure Virginia specialty plates like ones for Marshall University and Virginians for the Arts.

I’m looking at license plates in a way that I have not before because I’m at an annual license plate collector meetup in Mt. Airy, Maryland.

In the parking lot, I run into Charlie Gauthier, who has been a part of the Automobile License Plate Collectors’ Association for 50 years and has been coming to local chapter meet-ups for a long time.

I ask him what all he has on display at his tables and he quips back, “pieces of tin.”

That’s all they are to him?

“Yeah,” he says jokingly.

But these are not just pieces of tin. They are history. They are design. They are personality. They are automobile memorabilia.

“Everybody in here collects license plates, but the question is ‘what is the depth and breadth they get into?'” Gauthier says.

Indeed, everyone I meet at this place has a niche.

Some are looking to collect plates from all 50 states. Others are seeking plates from their birth years. One collector who lived overseas is into foreign plates. A guy named Tiger Joe… is, you guessed it, mainly collecting tiger-related plates.

Gauthier has maybe one of the toughest niches. 

“I decided long ago that I like collecting license plates issued to presidents and vice presidents of the United States,” he says, pointing out plates that decked out vehicles during inaugurations. He’s gotten them through presidential families, people who worked for the presidents, and even had a few people reach out to him as he built his reputation for his collection.

This is his focus. Has he ever been into collecting other things? Coins? Nope. Comic books? No. Baseball cards? No siree.

“Just license plates,” Gauthier says with a self-assuredness.

So what is it about license plates? For that, we ask Jack Hollingsworth. He’s one of the organizers of the Chesapeake chapter of ALPCA.

“You can have everything from the oldest plates that are known to man from 125 years ago to the present day, you have states that issue all sorts of colorful graphic plates with a bunch of pretty pictures on them,” he said. “There’s a history aspect there. We still have registers from some of the New England states, so you can find out who owned what plate in 1905 all the way up to the present day.

“You can spend as much or as little as you want… as little as 50 cents up to tens of thousands.”

In this church gym, about 80 people mill around, hunching over boxes of plates. You can buy, sell, trade, or just admire the displays.

Every event has a theme. This month’s is “error” or mistake plates that have any kind of manufacturing error: printing upside down, misspellings, and more.

Rick Kretschmer has been collecting for 20 years and has more than 2,000 plates. He has a vast website called RicksPlates.com. Kretschmer grew up in Maryland, so that is his favorite state to collect. 

“The most obvious error is this one here, where the numbers were stamped upside down on the plate. So Maryland is upside down on that,” Kretschmer says pointing to his display. “And that plate was actually used on the road for eight years.”

Oops! The Mistake Plates

Watching the scene, I get a sense that this gym seems filled with old friends. They take a giant photo of attendees holding their favorite plates. They hold a moment of silence for a collector who died recently. There’s a communal lunch.

“It is very much community — there are guys that have been in the club for 50 years,” says Alex Di Giovanni. “It’s the same people coming to meet after meet and convention after convention.

“And there’s real camaraderie.”

Di Giovanni goes by Eagle’s Eye Finds on Instagram and was a regular seller at the Dupont Flea Market before moving back home to Illinois recently. He’s the whole reason I found out about this swap meet because of his posts from the national convention in Denver earlier this year.

Di Giovanni says he loves old stuff, things with history, and a cool look.

“I come at license plates from more of a decor standpoint,” he said.

The Great Plates We Saw

His collection is mainly porcelain plates from the early days of vehicles. They have vivid colors and great old fonts.

Both Hollingsworth and Di Giovanni are in their 20s and among the growing number of younger people to get involved in collecting plates. 

Di Giovanni has found a buddy — Charlie Gauthier — because of these rectangles.

“Alex comes over to the house and we can spend a day just looking at plates,” Gauthier said.

Gauthier, 79, says a community can cease to exist unless new people are brought into the fold. I asked him about the future of collecting. 

“If you asked me 5 years ago, I would’ve said bleak. Asking me today, I think it’s great,” Gauthier said.

He has hope for the club because of this new wave of hobbyists that someday, too, will become veteran license plate collectors like him. They joke back and forth with Di Giovanni saying they hope to be old fogeys at license plate conventions in the decades to come.

“We won’t be there to recognize you though,” Gauthier says.

“We’ll be older, the plates will be the same,” he replies.

“Yeah, look at all the plates you’ll get!” Gauthier quips.

They’re keeping the hobby going for the next generation.

The License Plate Fanatics We Met