$224K Profit Flipping Number Plates (With a Python Scraper)

📝 u/TheTeflonDan writes on Reddit…

This is probably a bit different from the usual posts here but the principle is the same – buy underpriced, sell to the right buyer.

In Australia, state governments issued heritage number plates going back to the early 1900s. Some have become collectible – driven by patterns like repeating digits, sequential numbers, round numbers.

This guy hired a freelance Python dev to scrape the VicRoads database of 285K+ heritage plates, cross-referencing asking prices against recent secondary market sales to find underpriced combos.

The results 👇

• Bought 9 VIC plates from VicRoads at $12K each ($108K total) – sold for $304K. $196K profit.
• Best flip: plate 142.000 – bought $12K, sold $50.1K. 318% return.
• Quick flip: plate 234.345 – bought $30K, sold $43K in under a month.

Then a major catalyst hit: VicRoads stopped selling heritage plates entirely, making the secondary market the only source.

I’m currently holding 10 VIC plates bought for a total $198K. Estimating that I’ll be able to sell each plate for about $30K.

Total deployed: $507K AUD. Realised profit: $224K+ 🤯

Not just him, either. A commenter confirms making “just shy of 6 figures” doing the same thing. Another says their 4-digit plate is now worth 20x what they paid for it 10+ years ago.

The universal takeaway here isn’t number plates – it’s data arbitrage using public databases.

Build a scraper to find underpriced items in a large public dataset, then resell on the secondary market.

Could work for domain names, vintage items, collectible cards, even real estate listings 🤔

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