It’s been in the same Canberra family since 1927, when a drive to Sydney meant stopping to open farm gates.

Now ACT number plate ’35’ is going to auction for the first time – and it could fetch a small fortune.

Warren Vant drives a hail-damaged Nissan X-Trail. On paper, it’s not worth much. Except for the pieces of metal pinned to each end. That alone could put its value into six figures.

For almost a century, ACT number plate 35 has belonged to the same Canberra family, passed down through three generations since 1927.

Now, for the first time in its 99-year history, it’s going up for sale, as part of local auction house CARBIDS’ November number-plate auction.

Warren didn’t make this decision lightly; those two little digits carry a lot of history.

Warren’s grandparents, Bernard and Alice Vant, moved to Canberra from Sydney in about 1927, bringing their only child, Clifford, with them. Bernard joined the city’s early parks and gardens workforce, helping plant trees around the developing capital.

The family initially lived in Braddon before settling in Turner.

Back then, driver licences were few and far between and, without photos, they even included the driver’s height and eye colour.

The then Federal Capital Commission issued Bernard licence number 35 on 1 July 1927.

So, when it came time to register a car, he decided he’d quite like the same number on that too, which wasn’t hard.

“There were probably only 35 people driving back then – everyone would have known everyone,” Warren says.

“He probably could have even got a lower-digit number.”

Back then, Canberra was a rather different place. Mostly paddock, with much more paddock between it and the nearest big smoke.

“He talked about having to open and close farm gates as they drove to and from Sydney,” Warren recalls.

Warren doesn’t know what car his grandfather originally fitted the plate to, but remembers it appearing on a variety of ordinary family vehicles over the following decades.

The plate has also been re-minted, which is why it was black and white at first before moving to today’s ACT colours of blue and white.

When Bernard retired and returned to Sydney, Clifford, Warren’s father, kept the plate in Canberra for around 40 years.

Among the cars it adorned were an FB Holden, an HG Holden, and eventually, a Mitsubishi Magna. All Australian, if nothing exotic.

When Clifford died, Warren’s mother took ownership of the plate before passing it to Warren when she stopped driving.

Its most recent home has been his trusty, literally weather-beaten, Nissan X-Trail.

“I tell people when they’re sitting in it, you’re in an $180-odd-thousand car here,” Warren says.

He’s probably not wrong.

The current ACT number-plate auction record stands at $181,000, achieved by another two-digit plate, ‘54’, sold through CARBIDS in November 2025.

Other notable results include single-letter plate ‘X’, which fetched $147,200 in December 2022, ‘V’ at $87,600 in August 2023, and three-digit plate ‘125’, which sold for $86,100 in July 2023.

Plate ‘35’ belongs to the ACT’s original sequential number-plate series, dating back to February 1927.

Numbers from 1 to 99 are all privately held.

So why sell something that’s been in the family for nearly 100 years?

Warren says the decision follows his mother’s death. The plate forms part of the family estate, and his brother no longer lives in Canberra. Then there’s the question of what happens when Warren eventually passes it on himself.

“I’ve got three sons. How am I going to split it between them?” he says.

“It’s quite sad … Mum’s gone. That plate was important to her. But now seems the right time to do it.”

CARBIDS CEO Ben Hastings says rare number plates attract buyers for several reasons, from status and investment potential to a fascination with Canberra’s motoring history.

“It’s partly a status symbol, and it’s partly the heritage,” he says.

“A lot of people are doing it as an investment as well.”

Generally, the lower the number, the higher the price. Hastings says combinations containing the number eight are also particularly popular because of its association with good fortune in Chinese culture.

But ’35’ has something else going for it: a documented family history stretching back to Canberra’s earliest days, including an old photograph of the plate on one of the family’s cars.

“For some people, it is just the history behind them,” Hastings says.

And where do these expensive plates end up? Some go to collectors; others go to investors who eventually resell them.

Other times, Hastings says, “they just disappear into the abyss” and are rarely seen on cars around town.

For Warren, the sale marks the end of an era.

Bidding for ‘35’ closes on Wednesday, 4 November, through CARBIDS’ monthly number-plate auction. The buyer’s premium has also been reduced to 5.25 per cent, down from 12.75 per cent.