License plates, street signs for scrap

It may depend on the state but old vehicle license plates no longer with current tag and off a vehicle should be personal property. I would check on selling on ebay before you scrap license plates. I found some last fall in a curbside ""free" take pile and ended up selling the 9 license plates for over $30 on ebay. I was stunned (not overly old stuff) but I live in a low population state so those plates may be tougher for collectors to get than a state with millions of vehicles on the road.

As for street signs, certainly if they look like the current ones, I'd leave alone. If they are of an older style, I'd check with the city and they may be fair game. Some cities probably have an official policy how they surplus materials, some may not and just throw old stuff.

I work in a federal facility and even though there must be a policy of how to dispose of scrap metal (outside of what is written in a formal contract of work such as re-doing the HVAC system in a building or whatever), the policy may not be followed in all cases or that specific item may not of been written into the policy. I've seen many hundreds of pounds of insulated wire get tossed into trash dumpsters. If I would take it, I'd get busted for "taking advantage of my situation". The twisted logic I suppose if is that they'd rather see recyclable materials tossed (even though I could point to at least presidential executive orders from Bush2 that federal agencies should be as environmental friendly as possible) than to give some people "advantages" over others because of where they work. Some would counter that the feds would lose money surplus -ing old insulated wire but they lose money when they surplus anything. How many folks on this forum have bought old tower computers at government auction for almost nothing yet when my project has to buy a new computer, the generic system through "government contract" is about twice as expensive as the same unit in Best Buy. Figure out that "logic"....

get a receipt.

I have a street sign I pulled out of the river, Too banged up to be used as it is meant too but was always unsure about recycling it.
Infrastructure I believe the yard calls it, needs paperwork.

If the plates have the year on them stamped in the metal, some states allow classic cars to run a YOM (year of manufacture) plate. Sometimes these plate can be worth a few dollars each and the older they get the higher the price. I paid $35 for a 1948 NC plate for my 48 GMC.
Street signs, get a receipt from whoever you get them from, or take them to the city/county/state and make sure they are ok to have.
I responded to a shed fire a year or so ago, since it was a structure the fire marshal was called out to investigate. The people had street and road signs on and around the building. When the fire marshal was finished with his investigation he took all the signs with him, the owner of the property said they belonged to his son, so the fire marshal said that if his son wanted them back then he could come see him.

Speaking strictly for the state of Florida, selling street signs or license tags is strictly illegal. Tags are supposed to be turned in when they are retired and street signs are the property of the city, county or state. I do not know a scrap yard that will buy them.

Lic plates yards take them so I see no issue Yards particular the large ones obey the law .
Some states are AL some steel .For sure there are people who collect them .
Street signs realistically can't be legal to have . If you see one down on the ground (from incident )
consider the road crew will in time restore the sign to spot . A really mangled sign beyond repair
the yards will take but bring in a ton you best have paper work .
If you see a mangled sign on the ground and as you put it in your truck
your senses will tingle yes your at the edge ,all you need is a police car to casually show up
& you can bet you will have a problem .

Yep the learning curve of days past , innocence of it all . Once you can say you have completely lost count of
how many trips you made to the yard
then you better never get caught stealing as the police will figure --- 7 years scrapping and we finally caught him .

As for really old road signs:



New ones I would stay away from. As for plates, check the laws of the state. In Wyoming, the plate is the property of the owner. If I sell a truck, I keep the plates, and can do with them as I please. Some states actually own the plates, and some states used to (And may still) have the plates stay with the vehicle.

I doubt anyone would have problems with you having a 1963 license plate. It's the new ones that they're more concerned about

Originally Posted by DakotaRog

Then FL license plates should bring some good coin on the collectors market. I suspect Florida gov can't make a person mail back old plates if a person has moved out of state and got new plates from the current state.

Yeah, it's one of those laws that never really get enforced. The paperwork clearly says that failure to return can cost you your license but I have never heard of anyone getting busted for a plate hanging on the wall. OTOH, if you sell it to someone and it winds up on their car (it does happen) it will wind up costing you a lot more than you sold it for. So this is why the yards will not touch them and it is best to not sell them until they are truly old enough to be collectible...

Loose license plates are not problem and I even got me a nice collection. Only a few states require or penalize if the vehicle operator does not return the old plates to the DMV. The only restriction I see is if they still attached to a vehicle and the (salvage yard) owner wants to keep the tags to the vehicle with the registration.

Street signs are touchy. First, they're very obvious to identify and they should all been marked "Property of the dept." or similar on their back side. Secondly, just try to justify how you got them while trying to sell them to some yard, unless you got the paperwork that show you bought them at public auction. Just to give you an example, a few years ago, some thieves here took away tons of snowmobile trail signage and then tried to resell that for scrap, it didn't work and all they got is new housing behind bars.

Also, while I was in college, I called the provincial department for technical details for a project and I asked them what they do with the old signs. They told me that every sign is sent to a central location to be refurbished and very few are too damaged to be reused. On the other hand, the local city government is dumping their old signs at the yard where I dump my shred. Not sure that they would accept to resell some of them to me.