Most number plates auctioned in Cyprus go for €100. A few dozen go for thousands, and four have gone for more than €10,000. We went through the Road Transport Department's published results for every letter series from MAA to TTT, 537 auctions in all, to see where the money actually goes.
The figures below are final prices for the 22,353 plates that drew at least one bid. Plates nobody bids on are sold at a flat €100 once the auction closes, but those sales don't appear in the results, so they aren't counted here.
The short answer
More than half the plates in the data, 12,173 of them, went for €100: one bidder, the minimum bid, no competition. Nine in ten went for €500 or less. Only 22 plates reached €5,000, and only four passed €10,000.
So if you want digits of your own choosing, the realistic budget runs from €100 to a few hundred euros. Paying thousands is something a small number of buyers do for a small number of plates.
The ten most expensive plates
| Plate | Final price | Bids |
|---|---|---|
| PPP 777 | €15,000 | 6 |
| TTT 777 | €11,000 | 7 |
| THE 001 | €10,900 | 9 |
| PPP 111 | €10,000 | 5 |
| PXE 777 | €7,777 | 4 |
| PZZ 777 | €7,777 | 5 |
| PHP 001 | €6,000 | 2 |
| PXX 001 | €5,555 | 5 |
| PXX 777 | €5,555 | 3 |
| TAA 777 | €5,555 | 3 |
Three of the four five-figure plates come from triple-letter series. The exception is THE 001, which went for €10,900 in an ordinary series, more than any other 001 in these 537 auctions.
Which numbers buyers pay for
Of the 844 plates that sold for more than €1,000, three numbers make up more than two thirds: 777 with 222 plates, 001 with 189 and 888 with 187. After that the list thins out fast. 999 accounts for 67, 555 for 52, 007 for 43 and 111 for 42.
| Number | Record price | Plate |
|---|---|---|
| 777 | €15,000 | PPP 777 |
| 001 | €10,900 | THE 001 |
| 111 | €10,000 | PPP 111 |
| 888 | €5,500 | TBB 888 |
| 555 | €5,015 | PXX 555 |
| 999 | €5,000 | NHN 999 |
111 is the odd one out. It rarely gets past €1,000, yet it holds the third-highest record of any number. That record was set in PPP, where letters and digits both repeat, and it shows how much the letters can add.
The letters matter as much as the digits
The department releases letter series in a fixed order, so nobody picks the letters: a vehicle gets whichever series is open when it is registered. Some series still draw far more money than others.
| Series type | Examples | Series | Average total per series |
|---|---|---|---|
| Triple letter | PPP, TTT | 4 | €44,865 |
| Palindrome | PXP, TNT | 41 | €13,219 |
| Double letter | PXX, TAA | 82 | €11,246 |
| Everything else | — | 410 | €9,284 |
A series total is the sum of the final prices of all its plates. Triple-letter series raise almost five times as much as an ordinary one, but a pattern helps further down the scale too. PXP raised €39,724 and PXX €38,940, both more than the triple-letter MMM and NNN.
Letters that spell a word seem to count as well. TAX raised €32,936, and THE produced the most expensive 001 in the data. Two series aren't enough to call it a rule, but both sit well above the average.
The market has grown
Because series are issued in order, the first letter works as a rough timeline. The average series in the M block raised €5,253, with 31 plates drawing a bid. In the T block, which is still running, the figures are €15,135 and 56 plates.
| Block | Series | Plates with a bid, per series | Average total per series |
|---|---|---|---|
| M | 144 | 31 | €5,253 |
| N | 144 | 40 | €8,229 |
| P | 144 | 43 | €13,330 |
| T, up to TTT | 105 | 56 | €15,135 |
That is nearly three times the money per series, and almost twice as many plates drawing a bid.
You pay what you bid, even with no rival
The auction charges your own bid, not the next-highest one. If nobody else bids, you still pay the full amount you entered.
Sixteen plates went for more than €1,000 on a single bid. PYE 888 went for €5,000 with no other bidder, PYH 999 for €3,000 and MYA 999 for €2,700. Meanwhile the most fought-over plates in the data, MMM 888 and NET 001, drew 16 bids each and both closed at €2,000.
The practical lesson is simple. For a number that is likely to be contested, such as 777, 001 or 888 in a series with a pattern, bid what the plate is genuinely worth to you: you can't raise your own leading bid, and close to the deadline there may be no second chance. For almost anything else, the minimum bid is usually enough. It won more than half the plates in the data.
Prices that echo the plate
Nineteen plates sold for a price made of one repeated digit. PXE 777 and PZZ 777 went for €7,777, PXX 001, PXX 777 and TAA 777 for €5,555, and others for €2,222 and €1,111. On a lucky number, some buyers want a lucky price to match.
How we counted
We took the final price and number of bids for every plate, series by series, from MAA to TTT. Plates that drew no bids were left out. The numbers 13, 69 and 666 are banned from circulation in Cyprus and never appear. The department's records go back further than MAA; those earlier series aren't included here. Data as of 29 September 2026.
How bidding works, screen by screen, is covered in our guide to the Cyprus plate auction, and the latest series is in our TTT auction report. If you would rather we bid for you, see our bespoke plates service.
