According to The Star, Malaysia’s King – Sultan Ibrahim Iskandar – spent 1.5 million ringgit ($7.7 million) to purchase the “GOLD 1” license plate. This is the highest price ever paid for a license plate in Malaysia, and the money will be donated to the Federal Government.
The starting price for this license plate was only 20,000 ringgit ($10,200). Malaysia’s Minister of Transport, Anthony Loke, presented the special license plate to the King at the National Palace (Istana Negara) in Kuala Lumpur on February 20th.
Despite bearing the word “gold,” the license plate is not made of gold but is a special plate introduced in February 2024 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Malaysia’s Federal Territory Day (February 1st).
By purchasing this license plate, the King has broken his own record for the highest amount paid for a license plate in Malaysia.
In June 2023, he set a price of 1.2 million ringgit ($6.1 million) at an auction to acquire the “FF1” license plate. These two expensive plates are not the only unique and beautiful plates owned by King Sultan Ibrahim Iskandar.
According to Malaysiakini, he has a passion for beautiful license plates and also owns plates such as “V1,” “F1,” “WWW1,”… These are all plates he has won in auctions, but none of them fetched prices exceeding 1 million ringgit.
In addition to the license plates, King Sultan Ibrahim Iskandar also has a passion for cars. Many Malaysian and Singaporean news outlets reported that he owns more than 300 cars and several private jets.
He is also one of the wealthiest individuals in Malaysia, with a family fortune of at least $5.7 billion (nearly 140 trillion dong).
License plate auctions are also held in Vietnam, witnessing extremely high bidding amounts. At the beginning of 2024, the ultra-VIP license plate “30K-999.99” from Hanoi surprised everyone by setting a record auction price of 75.275 billion dong ($3.3 million).
This number astonished many people because with 75 billion dong, the winning bidder could afford many sports cars and high-performance supercars that are currently distributed in Vietnam in large quantities.
Previously, the record belonged to the license plate “51K-888.88” which sold for 32.34 billion dong ($1.4 million). However, after being forfeited and re-auctioned multiple times, in early November 2023, the winning bidder paid the full amount of 15.265 billion dong ($670,000) to claim the plate.
The following positions belong to the license plates: “88A-888.88” from Vinh Phuc province, sold for 29.43 billion dong ($1.3 million); “14A-888.88” from Quang Ninh province, sold for 21.855 billion dong ($954,000); “30K-666.66” from Hanoi, sold for 19.58 billion dong ($858,000); “30K-567.89” sold for 16.57 billion dong ($727,000); “30K-555.55” sold for 14.495 billion dong ($635,000)…
