Rod Shields is now a multi-millionaire. But he started his journey there by buying a license plate. Shields explains in an interview that the license plate was the beginning of his great success.
What kind of license plate was that? Rod Shields discovered in the late 1980s that the DVLA (Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency), which is responsible for administering vehicle registration plates in the United Kingdom, offered the ability to personalize vehicle registration plates beyond normal numbering.
Shields explored official options, eventually signing up and purchasing a personalized number plate reading “4VBF” for £120. That’s the equivalent of around 143 euros today. Shortly afterwards he was able to resell the license plate for 3,000 British pounds (today that would be around 3,500 euros).
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He used the license plate to pay for the purchase of a property
Why was that so important? He told British newspaper The Mirror that the money from the sale gave him the chance to put a down payment on a three-bedroom house. And with that he began building the business that would make him a millionaire: real estate development.
Real estate development refers to the purchase of land and houses, their development or renovation and the subsequent profitable resale.
Today, Shields is a successful real estate developer and he says part of his success comes from the business of buying and selling personalized license plates. In an interview with the online magazine Daily Record he says:
I now have a multi-million dollar real estate portfolio, and that’s all because of this tag. I always attribute the creation of my fortune to the purchase of this record. It gave me that [finanziellen] push I needed to do it.
What happened to the license plates? By the way, he still runs the personalized license plate business as a side business alongside real estate under the company UBR Plates. One of his most profitable number plates to date was ‘BE57APP’, for which he is said to have received more than £3,000. However, he does not give a specific number.
A Scot takes a different approach to becoming a millionaire: he raves about a South American country and becomes rich with it. What no one knows: The country doesn’t exist on any maps. But at some point the fraud is discovered and he ends up in prison in both France and England: A Scot becomes a millionaire because he sells an invented country twice