The collector: Jerry "Woody" Woodhead, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

The collection: License plates.

The story behind the collection...

I started collecting license plates as a sixth grade school student in 1968 when the 1967 license plates were being replaced with 1968 issues. 1967 was Canada's Centennial Year and I thought it would be an interesting project for school to obtain a license plate for 1967 from each of Canada's ten provinces and two territories. Back in 1968 I wrote to each of the governments of Canada's twelve jurisdictions requesting a license plate for my school project and EVERY jurisdiction responded with either an all zero's sample plate or a used license plate for my project. It was quite the conversation piece in the school, all the teachers and the school's principal were awed by my project.

In the months to follow I sent letters off to each of the fifty American States plus the District of Columbia to see if I could obtain a plate from each American State. Many but not all of the States responded with a license plate but I managed to obtain at least half of the USA's State plates by the end of 1968.

In the meantime I started to gather different years of Alberta license plates my home province. Within a few years I managed to obtain most years from the late 1920's to the current year of the time. By the time I was in high school in the early Seventies I met a couple of other license plate collectors who gave me some license plates and told me of a club called ALPCA  (Automobile License Plate Collectors Association) which I joined in December 1973 and of which I am still a member. Once I was a member of ALPCA I starting trading Alberta license plates or buying the other American States that I needed to complete the set from there. My relatives in Britain sent me my first two foreign license plate from there, a regular number plate, along with an old Hackney Carriage license plate licensed for four seats. I still have those two plates.

I have always liked old cars so why not collect the license plates, it was my love for old cars and the school project that started me off on this now popular hobby. There are dozens of collectors here in my home town of Edmonton. Another way to maintain and fund my large collection which is one of the top collections in Western Canada is that I buy a lot of license plates from estate sales and auctions and sell them at car show as a lot of car collectors want a license plate to match the year of their car. It is my personal contribution to the many beautifully restored antique cars and trucks that travel auto shows throughout North America.

Back in the Seventies and early Eighties license plates were fairly easy to get and the hobby had not taken off like it has in the last few decades. License plates I could pick up for a buck back in my school days can cost a hundred dollars or more now, some thousands!  Before Alberta and most of Canada went to permanent or long term issues I used to walk up the street in the spring time when the old plates were being thrown out and on garbage collection days I would pick up all the last year's issued of plates I could find sitting beside the garbage cans. With trade stock and correspondence with other collectors it became a cheap way to build a collection by trading Alberta license plates for those from other jurisdictions.

As the years went by I started collecting year runs from the different provinces mainly Western Canada including the Northwest Territories and the Yukon then expanding to the different vehicle types issued in Alberta and the neighbouring provinces and now I am a full blown collector. Currently my collection is over 7,000 plates with about 10,000 traders.

My collection is in boxes. A few years ago I started putting my plates up on Flickr for the world to see and for me on my computer's monitor so I don't have to dig through them to look at them.

I have many favourite finds, amongst them the plates I received from the jurisdictions of Canada back in '68.

Am I obsessed as a collector you ask? No, I am a collector just like any other type of collector, I just have a lot of stuff.  NOTE.....(You know you are obsessed when you buy the item you need for your collection from the hard earned money you have saved to buy your wife an anniversary ring, you get the item, your wife does not get the ring), ( You know you are obsessed when you don't make it to your parent's diamond wedding anniversary because you had to go to some antique shop out in the country to get a piece for your collection so you could not make it to the celebration), (You really know your obsessed when you remember the dates of all the local antique auctions but can't remember the date of your kid's birthday) I love to collect but family comes first!

Woody's collection on Flickr. 

All images used with the kind permission of Jerry Woodhead.