Category: Retirement

The Acton Swap Meet has come and gone, and Liquidation Blowout #1 of original pairs is complete. Stay tuned for Liquidation Blowout #2 later this year.

Ironically, business has been booming for 2024 in comparison to our sales over the past ten years. It seems that people have received the message that we’re closing down next year, and they’re eager to scoop a robustly-restored set of plates with our guarantee of YOM eligibility. Now is the time to act, before your year sells out for good. Even though business is temporarily booming, this is only a flash in the pan. Jon is tired of restoring plates and he wants to be done.

As predicted, we are becoming low in stock for certain years. Once we’ve sold out of a particular year where there are no further YOM-guaranteed items coming down the pipe, we will be labeling all plates of that year as “permanently sold out” in our stock lineup. As of now, that means the following years are sold out and not expected to return: 1919, 1920, 1922, 1923, 1928, and 1955. We are low (one last pair remaining) on several other years. We have reduced prices on several YOM years. Check our stock!

You may have already heard that Ontplates.com is getting ready to retire from the YOM sales business.

We’re getting ready for Liquidation Blowout #1! But it won’t be online. You’ll have to meet us in Acton, Ontario, on Saturday April 27. Here’s what’s happening:

• The 20th Acton Licence Plate Swap Meet will be held Saturday, April 27, from 8 am to 1 pm. Details about the event and a map can be found here. (opens separate site)
• Unposted inventory from Ontplates.com will be available for sale in Acton. You can find our logo, or just ask the organizers where to find our table.
• This unposted inventory consists entirely of YOM-clear Ontario plates that were purchased for restoration by Ontplates.com. You have never seen these. All are in sturdy condition, and many have fairly good original paint.
• Now that we’re retiring, these plates will not be restored, and are being offered at break-even prices.
• These plates will not be sold with a guarantee. Although we have verified the numbers as being available for YOM registration, these plates will need restoration to meet condition criteria.
• These plates are ideal for classic car owners who want to buy a discounted set of plates with an eligible number, so they can restore the plates themselves. Resellers and general collectors will also be interested.
• We have 50 YOM items to liquidate so far, with dozens more to be added before the Acton Swap Meet.
• No pictures will be posted online of these plates, and no shipping is offered. To take advantage, meet us (and many other plate vendors) in Acton on April 27.
• We don’t know of anyone for hire in Canada who is available to restore plates. Click here for a list of options within the USA.

All good things must come to an end. And that includes Ontplates.com as a functioning small business. But we’re not shutting our doors imminently, and we’re certainly not going to leave our loyal customers out in the cold.

Ontplates.com is a sole proprietorship, which means everything is the responsibility of one person in his spare time. As life happens, things change. Spare time isn’t as easy to find. New interests unfold. Families have new commitments. For a variety of reasons—some personal and some economical—Ontplates.com will ramp down in 2024, and will cease business operations in mid-2025.

Product Availability

To prepare for this change, we will focus our restoration and sale operations on works-in-progress. We hope to have no stalled items in our work queue by December 2024. Usually, when we shut down for the winter (because of no heat in the home garage), everything is paused: We have plates that have been blasted and are waiting for body repair. We have repaired plates that are waiting for primer. We have primed plates waiting for top coats. And we have top-coated plates waiting for number detailing. Our goal for December 2024 is to have no remaining restoration work. This means that restored plates of certain years will eventually go out of stock, not to return.

Timeline for Closure

We will continue until December 31, 2024, to sell pairs of plates that are guaranteed for Year of Manufacture registration. After that date, guaranteed sales will cease. Ontplates.com will continue to exist as a business until June 30, 2025. This is for two reasons:

1. To be available for customer support during their 6-month guarantee period, and;
2. To liquidate our remaining stock on an unguaranteed, as-is basis.

After June 30, 2025, our guarantee obligations will have been fulfilled, and we can discontinue business operations without compromising the previous guarantees that we have made.

The Future

The business itself is not for sale. The Ontplates.com brand will not be sold, and will continue to be used for hobby promotion purposes after formal closure of the business, which won’t happen for 18 months. This is good news, because it means that you’ll still be able to find Jon and pick his brain if you have questions about what you can and cannot do with Ontario’s YOM program.

Ontplates.com has built a well-earned reputation of being an honest, straight-shooting business that refuses to apply pressure to make a sale. There is an element of trust that clients must forge with us, as with any small online business. Some clients ask to contact us by phone to make sure that we’re legit before making a purchase. We’ve been around for 20 years, and as of this moment, we’ve sold 1719 registrable sets of plates (only 9 customers have ever had to take us up on our guarantee). We eschew the notion of “here today, gone tomorrow.” We will not simply vanish into the night without warning. If we have to wrap up, we’re going to do right by our customers… as we always have.

Updated Terms and Conditions

We have updated our Terms and Conditions page to outline exactly when we will stop offering guaranteed plates for sale, and how we will honour existing guarantees during our end-business liquidation.