Steven Silver, 67, of Kingston, Ontario, has been a fan of the license plate ever since it was introduced and still remembers the first time he saw it: “I left my mother and ran three blocks to see it… It was beyond anything a collector could imagine.” He then managed to purchase a second-hand license plate from the N.W.T. government and has long considered it one of his most prized possessions.

Another collector, Sam Bova, has been collecting only N.W.T. and Nunavut license plates for more than 30 years and now has about 1,300 plates in his collection. He says modern N.W.T. license plates are worth about $30, but the rarest ones sell for close to $1,000.

History of the Polar Bear License Plate
The license plate was introduced in January 1970 to mark the 100th anniversary of the Northwest Territories. The idea for the license plate was conceived by then-Commissioner Stuart Hodgson, and was intended to draw attention to the N.W.T. The government's polar bear logo had previously been designed by Helmut Seeger, and the license plate design was probably done by the same advertising agency.

The license plate became mandatory at the end of March 1970, and was stolen almost immediately.

Nunavut license plates
When Nunavut became an independent territory in 1999, a competition arose over the polar bear license plate. The copyright to the license plate remained with the N.W.T., but both territories used the design. In 2012, Nunavut switched to a rectangular license plate with a multi-coloured image of a polar bear under the aurora borealis, but this year it introduced its new polar bear license plate with a different orientation.

"The most iconic license plate design"
N.W.T.'s polar bear license plate It has been popular since its introduction in 1970, and the American License Plate Collectors Association (ALPCA) named it the “License of the Year 1970.”
Ethan Kraft, an American collector, says his videos about polar bear license plates are getting a warm response from collectors and non-collectors alike: “License plates around the world are usually rectangular, but the polar bear license plate is truly unique, and almost every license plate collection in the world has a polar bear license plate.”

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