About The Tag Dr.
The license plate bug got ahold of me as a little kid in the mid to late '50's growing up in Ohio when my dad would remove the plates from our car and hold me up to hang them in the garage. Although dad wasn't a tag collector per se, we had a wall full of colorful '40's, '50's and '60's Ohio plates that made for a really nice display. I can remember as a kid going into the garage and just staring at those walls. The colors and numbers were a big fascination to me, and nothing has changed after all these years. Glad that I'm old enough now to have been young then. (photo below taken of me and my first car in May of 1968. A 1947 Special Deluxe Plymouth)
Being somewhat of a late bloomer on the internet (Dec. 2001) I immediately found out there were lots of folks really into plates. Prior to this, I honestly thought I was the only guy on earth into tags, as I had never met anybody that shared my passion of collecting plates. But soon after getting on the internet, I discovered the license plate club, ALPCA, and joined immediately. It has opened all kinds of doors, along with making some really good friendships.
The biggest door that opened for me was steering me into license plate restoration, and quite by accident. I had been redoing the rougher plates for my own collection for years, but it wasn't until Mike Parker came over to my house right I joined the club and saw some of the plates I had restored hanging up in my rec room. Little did I know my life was about to change when he said, "Son, you've got a God given talent. You need to do this professionally."
That thought had never occurred to me, and without even trying, through word of mouth, guys started contacting me wanting me to do their plates. One thing led to another and in less than a year I had more business than I could take care of. In just a few short years later I was only restoring California plates, mainly the '63 black base issue. I had hooked up with several car clubs on the west coast and plates were flying back and forth from California to Georgia on a daily basis. I learned that these car guys didn't own just one car, many of them had fleets of cars. And they had lots of buddies that also had classic cars. So the repeat business was really keeping me busy. I had so much business that I got Mike Forbes (8609) on board, and Mike was working on some of the severely damaged plates because he had more time to spend on these road kill tags than I did. (plus Mike was better at the repairs than I was) So I'd bead blast them down to bare metal, send them off to Mike in Virginia, he'd get them straightened out and repaired, send them back to me in primer ready for me to finish up with the painting and lettering. We had it going on. And we'd take on any tag, no matter the condition. (check out some of the before and after's in the revolving plates on tagdr.com)
After a full 20 years of doing nothing but restorations, I found it time to hang up the paint gun and concentrate on my license plate store. And although it says all over my website that I'm retired now, I still get several emails a week requesting plate restoration. I only wish I had the time to take on these tags, but I needed a slower pace now that I'm in the fourth quarter of life. So now I'm out there digging up inventory for my tag store. It's fun, and it keeps me just busy enough to still enjoy retirement. (photo below taken July 2025)
Over the years I have attended National plate meets in Huntsville, AL 2007 ~ Ft. Wayne, IN 2016 ~ Knoxville, TN 2019 ~ Covington, KY 2021 and Hampton, VA 2022. Other meets I've been to include Marietta, GA, ~ Cleveland, Tenn. ~ Lake Junaluska, NC. ~ Crossville, Tenn, ~ Columbia, SC, ~ Spartanburg, SC, ~ Tryon, NC and for several years I co-hosted the Georgia tag meet along with Mike Parker in Avondale Estates, GA before the meet moved to Marietta.
In closing, I encourage any new plate enthusiast to join ALPCA where you'll come in contact with many other collectors, and have access to plate meets where you meet folks that have like minds. But more importantly, it's the people you meet along the way that make this such a great hobby. Many life long friendships are made which truly does make this THE most enjoyable hobby! So get out there, have some fun, make a new friend, and pick up a few tags!
