An auction of car license plates containing the letters BMW and AMG that ended yesterday netted the treasury NT$2.23 million (US$67,775), the Directorate General of Highways (DGH) said.
The auction began on Monday, with the starting price for car license plates containing BMW at NT$3,000 and for those containing AMG at NT$6,000.
A total of 15 BMW plates were sold, but license plate numbers BMW-0004 and BMW-0014 were not available for auction, because the number four sounds similar to the Chinese word for death and is widely considered an unlucky number, the Motor Vehicle Division Director Lin Fu-shan (林福山) said.
Photo: CNA
Only two AMG license plates were auctioned, numbers AMG-8888 and AMG-6666.
These two car license plates became available after the bidders in the previous auction failed to make the payments in time, the directorate said.
The directorate had estimated that the BMW license plates would be in higher demand than the two license plates containing AMG, given that BMW was ranked No. 2 in terms of the sales of luxury cars in the nation, it said.
However, the license plate AMG-8888 proved to be the most attractive to bidders, selling for NT$889,000. License plate number AMG-6666 went for NT$299,000.
License plate number BMW-9999 was sold for NT$253,000, the highest price garnered among the BMW plates. License plate BMW-0001 was sold for NT$152,000.
The bidding for the BMW-9999 license plate began during the last minute of the scheduled time for the auction, so the bidding time was extended by 30 minutes.
Commenting on the results, the directorate said that the bidding price for license plate numbers containing the number 8888 is generally higher than those of other numbers, because Taiwanese prefer the number eight as it sounds similar to the Chinese word for prosperity.
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