DEL TAG #6=$675K---WOW !!

Del. tag goes for $675,000

By ROBIN BROWN, The News Journal

Twenty-five-year-old Frank Vassallo IV of Wilmington smiles after winning the plate. (
The News Journal/SCOTT NATHAN

Family members of the tag's previous owner, Charles Murphy -- who died in November -- congratulate the winner.
(Buy photo)
The News Journal/SCOTT NATHAN

Sherri Klemkowski of Emmert Auction Associates shows off the license plate during bidding Sunday at the Rehoboth Beach Convention Center.

The News Journal/SCOTT NATHAN

During the process, Vassallo gets approval from his grandfather in California to bid higher.

The News Journal/SCOTT NATHAN
REHOBOTH BEACH -- Cheers and applause filled the packed convention center as Tim Ayers of Seaford bid $625,000 for the coveted No. 6 black-and-white Delaware license plate.

As the bidding grew more spirited, so did the noise.

Over the boom, 25-year-old Frank Vassallo IV of Wilmington, who had bid $625,000 moments earlier, yelled into his cell phone to his grandfather in California. He reported that they had the high bid at $625,000.

Auctioneer Butch Emmert, realizing he had two bids for the same amount, returned to Vassallo to ask if he was in for $650,000.

Vassallo's hand trembled slightly on his cell phone as he repeated the question and then nodded to Emmert, then hollered to his grandfather.

"We're at $650,000, and we're the high bid."

Then Emmert worked on Ayers, who owns The Guide in Sussex County, likening the plate to the Mona Lisa, saying, "Anything worth $650,000 is worth $700,000."

Amid the ruckus, Sheri Klemkowski of Rehoboth Beach smiled serenely like a model, showing off the plate in a Delaware-style "Deal or No Deal."

Cheers and shouts of "Go for it!" grew.

Then Emmert, after more banter, said a "third and final call" at $650,000 -- and Ayers raised by $10,000.

"Six-sixty!"

"Six-seventy-five?" he asked Vassallo, sparking more roar, then all eyes were on the young man with the cell phone.

"Six-seventy-five," he told Emmert calmly. "

"It's a world record!" Emmert proclaimed. "Six-seventy five!"

Then Emmert again courted Ayers, sharing a report of a license plate with the No. 1 from Abu Dhabi that sold over the weekend for $14 million in the United Arab Emirates.

"Come on, Tim!" someone yelled.

Going once, going twice, a third and final call at $675,000. Then Emmert asked Ayers to raise to $685,000, saying, "What is $10,000 on this?"

But Ayers shook his head as Emmert repeated, "Going once at $675,000, going twice."

"Third and final call," he said over cheers. Then finally, "Sold!"

Vassallo beamed, yelling into the phone, "We got it at six-seventy-five."

He was swarmed like a buzzer-beating hero, but he turned to the people behind him, relatives of the tag's previous owner, Charles Murphy, a prominent Milford resident who died in November at age 87.

"Congratulations," Murphy's son John, also of Milford, told Vassallo, extending his hand.

"Thank you very much," Vassallo said "I just wish my grandfather could be here."

Despite the cross-country bidding, he said, "the plate will stay in Delaware."

Vassallo's grandfather is Anthony Fusco of Wilmington, the owner of Fusco Management, a development company that has worked on projects such as the College Square Shopping Center in Newark. Fusco is wintering in California and will decide what car wears the tag, Vassallo said.

"Everyone in the family has them," he said. "It's a family thing. It's a Delaware thing.

"We develop in Delaware, and it will stay in Delaware and in our family and the company."

The same family bought No. 9 for $185,000 at a 1993 auction by Emmert, with an annual appreciation coming out to about 7 percent, said Vassallo, who drives No. 27.

Among other black-and-white Delaware tags sold Sunday, No. 507 went for $50,000, No. 839 for $40,000, No. PC 627 for $8,000, and No. 9030, also for $8,000.

An invalid, or "dead," No. 6 sold for a mere $1,100.

Mike Firetti of Rehoboth Beach said his winning bid of $16,000 for tag C 108 is "going to be a good investment" -- and fun while he uses it.

Likewise, Ernie Sando of Rehoboth Beach said his $3,500 for No. PC 3759 -- an outdated designation now used on many types of vehicles -- is "a real bargain and a perfect complement to my Mercedes."

Sando was among nearly 500 auction guests who registered as bidders. He was not among those who paid the $50,000 deposits that were required to bid on tag No. 6.

But he scanned a large inventory of furniture and housewares in the three-estate auction. Among the day's many bargains were a near-mint 2003 Mercedes ML 350 for $18,000 and a show-restored 1958 Chevrolet Apache pickup that sold for $13,500. Sando snagged a pair of brass candlesticks for $75, but the best part, he said, was Vassallo bidding by phone -- a rare sight at the many auctions he attends.

"This auction generated an excitement I haven't seen in Delaware in a long time. Wasn't this fun?" he said.

As Vassallo made his way outside, he admitted he was a bit surprised by the many requests for interviews. He said his family had no set amount in mind.

"We did it all off the fly with no number," he said. "We didn't have any set price, more than five hundred [thousand] and less than a million."

Then Joan Jester of Pike Creek was first to ask for his autograph and to pose with him for a photo. Winnie Kee of Rehoboth Beach, who drives a car bearing a black-and-white PC 79 tag, clapped Vassallo on the back and shook his hand, saying, "We were rooting for you!"

"That was what I was here for," he said

Ayers stayed to watch more of the auction, although he wasn't buying anything because No. 6 "was what I was here for." But he said he is glad the tag will stay in the state.

"I just came to see what this one goes for so I get an idea of what mine's worth," said Doris Dayton of Seaford, who inherited her father's No. 191. "Where do they get the money from?"

Curiosity also brought out Jim Murray of Dover, given No. 67 by a friend with several black-and-white tags about 45 years ago.

"I just enjoy having it," he said. "It's part of me."

The event's successful bidders Sunday at the Rehoboth Beach Convention Center paid Emmert Auction Associates of Rehoboth Beach a 12 percent buyer's premium if paying by credit or debit card and 10 percent for cash or check purchases.

The balance on the No. 6 tag is due within a week, Emmert said, when the registration is transferred at a Division of Motor Vehicles office.

Vassallo, who said he was glad not to disappoint his grandfather, said he never bid on anything before -- and probably won't again for a while.