Key findings:

• The most expensive reg plate inspired by an on-screen star, Sherlock Holmes’ ‘110 MES’ plate, costs more than a Lamborghini Aventador at £275,350
• You could buy three Tesla Model Y cars for the price of Batman’s ‘1 BAT’ reg plate
• If you purchased all the number plates relating to EastEnders, it would total £283,363

After the news of a driver’s number plate being auctioned for £73,010, we’ve been wondering what drivers would have to pay in order to get a private registration plate inspired by their favourite on-screen character.

We ran the names of the most popular characters from film and TV, according to ranker.com, through several registration plate marketplaces to see how much they’d cost. And it turns out some are incredibly expensive.

For example, when we first began our research, we found that a Barbie registration plate reading ‘BAR 81E’ was for sale at the cost of £886,875. Quite unbelievably, that registration plate is no longer available, meaning someone is now the owner of that plate!

Batman Bears The Most Expensive Film Reg

When looking at the top 20 film characters of all time, voters ranked Batman as their number one. If you look at various registration auction sites, such as SwiftReg, RegTransfers and CarReg, the main sites we used for our research, the most expensive plate you can buy relating to Batman is '1 BAT', which will set you back £166,719.

For that amount of money, you could afford to buy three brand-new Tesla Model Y vehicles. This would still give you enough left over to then go and buy the UK’s most popular car, the Ford Puma. There’d even be enough change from that transaction to buy yourself and the family three new Apple Vision Pro headsets. Or just buy 139 Apple Vision Pro headsets and no cars. Your choice.

Other expensive plates include ‘13 OND’, perfect for any James Bond fanatic, currently priced at £65,200 - only 2% of the value of the iconic stunt car Aston Martin DB5 that’s worth £3 million. For those into Star Wars, why not opt for a plate reading ‘H45 ANS’ for Han Solo at £48,400?

Film Character Vs. Film Character

Speaking of Han Solo, it’s interesting to see which reg plates come out the most expensive when comparing different characters. For example, as we’ve already mentioned, a Han Solo ‘H45 ANS’ plate costs £48,400, whereas when you try to find a Luke Skywalker plate, the best we could find is a plate reading 'S7 UKE', which would (only) cost you £16,490 in comparison.

Another comparison we made was pitting two wizards against each other, Harry Potter and Gandalf from Lord of the Rings. This one was a little closer to the Star Wars comparison – it was the Boy Who Lived that came out on top with the more expensive plate, with 'H44 RRY costing £24,720 versus the best we could do for the White Wizard, which was a plate reading 'W111 ARD' priced at £11,275.

More Affordable Film Reg Plates

At the other end of the table, there were a couple of much more affordable reg plates. In 19th place is Hannibal Lecter. If you’re a fan of those films, you can purchase yourself a 'LE02 TER' plate, which is currently set at £454.

However, the best we could find was for the Terminator. If you’re a big fan of the films or Arnie in general, there’s actually a registration plate currently going for only £153, which reads ‘T800 ERM’ – a combination of TERM-inator and the T-800 series of Terminators.

Sherlock Holmes Takes Home Award For TV Character With The Most Expensive Reg Plate

When looking at the top 20 TV characters of all time, Sherlock Holmes is the character with the most expensive reg. The most expensive plate you can purchase today inspired by the British TV phenomenon is '110 MES', where you only need to replace the ‘H’ with ‘11’ to get a near-perfect match.

However, this comes at a price and is actually the most expensive plate we found during our research, totalling an eye-watering £275,350, over a quarter of a million pounds.

For that amount of money, you could afford to buy six Tesla Model Y cars, double what someone willing to pay for the Batman registration plate highlighted above could afford. Although if you had that much cash, you might be more inclined to get behind the wheel of a Lamborghini Aventador, currently priced at £271,146.

Rounding off the top three were Parks and Recreation’s Ron Swanson, who you could display your fanatical affection for by purchasing 'RON 1' for £165,195, or perhaps you’re more of a Fresh Prince of Bel-Air fan and would prefer a Will Smith-inspired 'FRE 55H' registration plate, which is currently going for £125,000.

TV character Vs. TV character

Looking at the character versus character angle for the TV side of things, there’s an interesting comparison between Breaking Bad’s Walter White and Saul Goodman, who of course has his equally popular spin-off series, Better Call Saul.

For Walter fans, you can purchase a plate reading 'W417 TER' for £8,960, but it’s Saul fans that will find the more expensive – and in our opinion, better overall – registration plate, putting the ‘Good’ in ‘Goodman’ with 'TOO 600D' currently available at £30,000. It’s a plate we think lawyer, Saul Goodman would likely have purchased if the opportunity arose to help win over potential clients..

Another comparison we made was between the cast of Friends, in particular Joey and Chandler, who were the two main characters that made it into the fan-voted top 20 TV characters list.

For Joey Tribbiani fans, you can purchase a registration plate reading 'JOE 7Y', which is the closest you can get, for £26,200. However, for the Chandler Bing die-hards out there, we found an incredible registration plate available for £75,000, which is worth every penny when you’re able to drive around with a plate that reads 'B1 NGO', a nod to his surname.

More affordable TV reg plates

Not possible! The cheapest registration plates we could find that are related and inspired by the names of TV characters in the 20 list were Kermit the Frog’s (‘FR70 GGY for £4,745) and Arya Stark’s of Game of Thrones (‘ST71 ARK’ for £4,175).

Obviously, these aren’t cheap at all, but they are the only ones under the £5k bracket.

Most Expensive Soap Reg Plates Go To EastEnders

After we did both film and TV characters, we also decided to see which reg plates would cost the most that were based on some of the most iconic characters from the current cast.

The most expensive registration plate overall would be for anyone looking to represent EastEnders’ Martin Fowler. The best reg we could find is 'MAR 71N' and that would currently set you back £110,165. That’s the same as 574 years of Netflix Premium, by the way, or 283 PlayStation 5 consoles. You could instead buy four Ford Puma cars for the family.

The person with the second highest possible plate goes to another EastEnder, and possibly the most famous of them all, Phil Mitchell. The ‘PH11 LLS’ plate is currently set at £95,250. And in third place, we find Corrie star, Roy Cropper. A plate with Roy’s name on it, '5 ROY', goes for £60,500.

At the 'cheaper' end of the scale are reg plates inspired by Emmerdale star, Paddy Dingle and Corrie’s Sally Metcalfe. Drivers can grab a Paddy-inspired plate, ‘PA11 DDY’, for_ ‘just’_ £12,650.

Alternatively, if you would like something a tad cheaper, the reg plate ‘SI4 LLY’ inspired by Sally Metcalfe would set you back £12,499.

Browse our latest car leasing deals if you’re considering an upgrade.

Methodology

Vanarama gathered the top 20 film and tv characters from Ranker as voted by their readers. We then used multiple registration plate auction sites, such as SwiftReg, RegTransfers and CarReg, to find plates that closely resembled the name of the characters to create a reg plate database. We then sorted the database from most to least expensive to find the characters with the most expensive reg plates. After that, we duplicated the process, this time with the most iconic characters from the current cast of the four leading UK soaps, to find out which characters and shows had the priciest plates.

After that, we found the current prices for various items, such as cars and technology, to provide a comparison of how much these plates cost and what people could purchase for the same price. All registration plates covered were available to buy as of June 2023.