My wife and I drove from Penn-sylvania to Colorado in 2017 to begin our new lives out west. As we crossed the Great Plains, I saw plenty of Colorado plates also rushing toward the Rockies. I looked forward to the moment when I could swap out “You’ve got a friend” for the green-and-white mountainscape of Colorado.

In Colorado, vanity isn’t just a mirror thing – it’s stamped in metal and bolted to your bumper. With more than 200 designs – from somber memorials to sly inside jokes – our bumpers double as billboards for who we are, where we came from and what we love. Whether you’re touting your alma mater, cheering for the Nuggets or joining the mysterious “Support the Horse” brigade, there’s a tag for nearly every passion, pastime and punchline.

We visited the DMV in Fort Collins soon after arriving – not typically a celebratory moment. A clerk shuffled our paperwork, and after many questions about insurance, finally handed over our new plate. “Congratulations,” he said. “You’re one of us now.”

For $60 plus a $25 annual renewal, your plate can trumpet that you graduated from the University of Colorado, joining 12,047 plate-owning alums. Or you can join 1,648 Nuggets fans hyping our hoopers. The most popular specialty plate, driven by 68,369 Coloradans, reads “Celebrate Life,” memorializing the twelve students and teacher who died in the Columbine shootings. Proceeds benefit causes from hospice care to juvenile diabetes – and, cryptically, “Support the Horse.” (Who doesn’t love that red-eyed “Maverick” at DIA?)

The single most popular plate isn’t a cause at all – it’s black. Reintroduced in 2022 after being phased out in the 1950s, it’s a throwback to the days before plates became marketing slogans (“Virginia is for Lovers,” “Idaho Potatoes,” “Maine Vacationland” or Kansas’s current “To the Stars”). Some 393,711 Coloradans chose black. The reintroduced blue and red plates each have about 14,000 fans, far more than “Honorary Consul” with zero takers or “Olympic Committee,” a retired plate perhaps useful only for bribing your way to a Winter Games bid.

The all-time champ, though, is the classic white-mountain-green-sky plate, with 3,656,024 on the road. Conceived by Governor Stephen McNichol, designed by Bill Condit and released in 1960, its ridgeline is said to resemble the view from Cañon City – fitting, as you’ll see.

I learned all this from Colorado License Plates: The First 100 Years – 1913-2013, the definitive book on the subject. At the Berthoud Library, co-author Tom Boyd slid the lavishly illustrated volume across the table to me.

Born in Colorado Springs in 1946, Boyd has collected that year’s plates from every county. He’s also led the Colorado branch of the Auto License Plate Collectors of America (ALPCA). If 3,000 members of his group petitioned the DMV, they could get their own ALPCA plate.

That’s good news for anyone. Rally 3,000 supporters for your idea – Rockies Baseball Optimist Society, Rocky Mountain Oyster Appreciation Club, Colorado Natives Against People Who Move Here from Texas – and you can apply. If approved, you can launch your own plate.

“I’ve always watched license plates,” Boyd said, citing a fascination with numbers. “And I noticed my father watching them too.” He told of a 1963 Wheaties promotion: send a box top and $1 and you’d get a full set of miniature state plates. Boyd got the dollar from his mom, with one condition from his dad – the cereal box had to be empty first. He didn’t, in fact, eat all his Wheaties, but it became the breakfast of champions for his collecting habit. 

He began with Colorado’s 1976 Bicentennial plate, marking both the nation’s 200th birthday and the state’s centennial. Soon he was pawing through garage-sale boxes, joining ALPCA and even arranging a tour of the Colorado Correctional Facilities plant in Cañon City – where, yes, all our plates are made by prison inmates.

“It’s considered a plum job if you’re a prisoner,” Boyd said.

Some wits take their creativity to personalized plates, as long as they stay within seven letters, spaces or numbers. Boyd once drove behind a Colorado plate reading INVUQT. It looks like an Inuit word until you sound it out: “I envy you, cutie.”

The DMV wouldn’t share its favorites, but said there are 78,000 personalized plates in Colorado and that “Coloradans are very clever and creative.”

Sometimes too creative. The state’s “prohibited/offensive” list rejects hopeful entries from 1BADSOB to 1HOTD8. Many others are so obscure you can’t tell whether to be offended.

When I applied for plates in 2017, my beloved Chicago Cubs were only months removed from their first World Series win in 108 years. I should have claimed CUBSWIN. But maybe that’s offensive to Rockies fans.