Using TypeScript to Obtain One of the Rarest License Plates

Dev snags rare vanity plate; community fights over prison labor, Danish flex, and drive-time pings

TLDR: An engineer scripted Florida’s plate checker to chase ultra-rare vanity plates, sidestepping slow tools. The comments erupted into an ethics brawl over prison-made plates, Danish flexing with fancy letters, safety worries about alerts while driving, and a tip that some “unavailable” plates are actually up for grabs offline.

A coder set out to script their way into one of the rarest vanity plates by auto-checking Florida’s public plate tool, skipping the $20/month paywall of the data site everyone uses. Cue the comment section: ethics vs. aesthetics and a whole lot of chaotic energy. The hottest take came fast—hippich slammed vanity plates entirely after learning Texas plates are made by “minimally paid prisoners,” turning a cute tech hack into a moral debate. Meanwhile, Denmark showed up like a swaggering cousin: Svip bragged that Danes can buy plates with Æ, Ø, Å, and even short combos like “ØÅ” may be up for grabs—international flex achieved. Safety cops also entered the chat: valleyer scolded, “You should not be getting notifications while driving,” dunking on the idea of live plate alerts. Others chimed in with hustle tips—moralestapia casually scripts for premium phone numbers, and moduspol revealed a DMV gotcha: some states mark old plates “unavailable” online even after two years, when they’re actually free for anyone at the counter. So yes, the dev used TypeScript to glide through Florida’s vanity plate checker, but the real show is the crowd arguing whether rare plates are flex, flaw, or just a fast lane to drama.

Key Points

  • The author seeks rare license plate combinations and defines a rarity hierarchy (e.g., single numbers, single letters, two-letter combos).
  • PlateRadar provides aggregated availability data but is behind a $20/month paywall and refreshes every 24 hours.
  • Florida’s online vanity plate checker allows pre-checking custom sequences and supports multiple combinations per request without added delay.
  • Using Burp Suite, the author captured a POST request showing the site uses ASP.NET Web Forms with __VIEWSTATE and __EVENTVALIDATION.
  • EVENTVALIDATION is identified as an anti-forgery measure that could complicate automated form submissions and scraping efforts.

Hottest takes

"at least in Texas all plates are made by minimally paid prisoners" — hippich
"they permit all Danish letters, including Æ, Ø and Å" — Svip
"You should not be getting notifications while driving" — valleyer
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