Auction of car numbers planned

PHUKET: Phuket will be the first province outside Bangkok to stage an auction of desirable car registration numbers. A total of 301 numbers will go on the block at the auction at the end of next month at the Royal Phuket City Hotel. Prasit Amarapan, Chief of the Phuket Provincial Transportation Office (PPTO), said that the auction follows two similar, highly successful events in Bangkok. There will be a variety of categories of numbers up for sale, all starting with the letters gor-gai jor-jahn: single digits from 1 to 9; pairs (11, 22, 33, etc); three-of-a-kind (111, 222, etc); four-of-a-kind (1111, 2222, etc); thousands (1000, 2000, etc); runs of three (such as 123 or 456), double pairs (1122, 1199, 5588, etc); palindromic numbers (1221, 3443, etc); and repeating pairs (1212, 5353, etc). “I think the biggest demand should be for numbers like 8989, 8899 or 9988 – that was the case in Bangkok,” said K. Prasit. “That’s because Chinese people believe that 8 and 9 are lucky numbers. “I think Phuket people are likely to be interested in four-of-a-kind numbers such as 5555 or 2222,” he said. “The first auction in Bangkok brought in about 40 million baht,” K. Prasit added. As in Bangkok, the money raised in the Phuket auction will go to the Road Safety Fund. Reserve prices have not yet been set, though K. Prasit gave an indication that some won’t be cheap. “I have recommended the reserve price for four-of-a-kind numbers be 50,000 baht, with bidding rising in increments of 5,000 baht.” Other numbers, however, will have lower reserve prices. “The double pairs will start at 1,000 baht with bidding rising by 500 baht a bid,” K. Prasit said. The auction will be open to all-comers, including people who want to replace the existing number on their car and even people who do not have a car at all. The only stipulation will be that the number must be registered to a vehicle within 180 days of the sale. Those interested must register before the auction and put down a deposit, as yet undecided. The auction will be staged by Katha Communication Co, the company that organized the Bangkok sales. For more information, call the PPTO at Tel: 076-214930 during government office hours.