Lest there be any doubt: Guangzhou Journal; First Comes the Car, Then the $10,000 License Plate - New York Times

By JIM YARDLEY
Published: July 5, 2006

Photos: In Chinese culture, 8 is the luckiest number, while 4 is the unluckiest.; At a recent auction in Guangzhou, one plate featuring several lucky numbers fetched more than $10,000. (Photographs by Nelson Ching for The New York Times)

At a government auction inside a dingy gymnasium, a young businessman named Ding walked away a happy winner the other day. Like everyone else, he was bidding on license plates and did not seem to mind that his cost $6,750.

For the same money, Mr. Ding could almost have afforded two of the Chinese-made roadsters popular in the domestic car market. His bid was almost 20 times what a Chinese farmer earns in a year, and almost 7 times the country's per capita annual income.

And yet, in the auction in this manufacturing capital in southern China, Mr. Ding, who gave only his last name, could not even claim top price. The most expensive plate -- AC6688 -- fetched $10,000 on a day when officials sold hundreds of plates for a total of $366,500.

''I thought it was rather cheap,'' said Mr. Ding, 30, a gold chain glinting under his open black sport shirt, as he walked off with the paperwork for APY888. ''Since I have a nice car, I thought I should get a nice plate.''

These guys are total pikers compared to what they'll pay in, where else, the UAE: Your oil dollars at work - $9.8 million license plate auction in the UAE

The fascination with distinctive tags is a world-wide phenomenon, but $926,000 for a plate that says "50G" is uniquely asinine.

Snippet of an article, but there are 75 comments, very heated of course; here's one:

Simply ridiculous, that makes me want to get a tesla

If you have 45 minutes, I HIGHLY recommend the video
It is on the "richest people of the middle east", and it mainly focuses on their car collections.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6312295472862851569

In regards to the movie link,

It discusses the formation of an Arab version formula1 (A1)
A man that has different colored cars for each day
a man that has a $ 10,000,000 car collection
and license plate buying