License Plate Sells for $14 Million

We couldn’t resist one more bit of license plate-related news. This one reminds us that while everything may be bigger in Texas, things in Abu Dhabi are comically huge. Like the prices people are willing to pay for license plates. Earlier this week in the moneyed sheikdom, one sold for 52.2 million dirhams (about $14 million) at a charity auction. What’s so special about it? The license plate reads: 1. Over at the New York Times‘ Wheels blog, Richard Chang points out that this deviates from the norm, “because most license plates in Abu Dhabi carry both Arabic and Western numerals and scripts.” The world-record-setting price bested the 2006 sale of Abu Dhabi license plate number plate #5 (also featuring only a Western number) for 25.2 million dirhams. As for the lucky buyer, it was one Saeed Abdel Ghaffar Khouri, a wealthy 25-year-old who told reporters that he “wanted to be No. 1″ and “was prepared to spend as much as 100 million dirhams” for a license plate indicating as much.

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