Bolts specialty license plates going quick as lightning

The man arrived early Wednesday morning at the Pasco Tax Collector’s office in Land O’ Lakes with a specific goal in mind — let the world, or at least area motorists, know he expected a championship from the Tampa Bay Lightning.

On the day the Lightning would win their second consecutive Stanley Cup, the man told Tax Collector Mike Fasano he planned to reserve a personalized Lightning specialty plate with the tag spelling out “3CUPS.”

“Talk about confidence,” Fasano said.

Turned out, others were even more confident.

The plate was unavailable. Someone had already reserved it on Friday, July 2 in Broward County, when the Lightning were up two games to none over the Montreal Canadiens.

The identity of the purchaser is not public record. Nor is the name of the person who ended up acquiring a different Lightning specialty plate in Pasco County.

It’s also not known if 3CUPS and 3CUPZ means the motorists are celebrating the franchise’s third Stanley Cup championship or proclaiming their expectations that the Lightning will three-peat in 2022.

The spike in motorists’ enthusiasm about the Lightning is not unexpected. There was similar response after the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ Super Bowl 55 victory in February.

“We absolutely see an increase after a championship, and the enthusiasm that some of our customers have when they are handed their plate is almost as if we handed them a championship trophy,” said Hillsborough Tax Collector Nancy C. Millan.

The Tampa Bay Lightning is one of 16 sports-related specialty plates issued by the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles. Overall, the state issues 120 specialty plates that are available for purchase for $25 plus the registration fee. Customizing it, with “3CUPS” or some other personal vanity, is an added expense.

The state redesigned the Lightning plate in 2019, 27 years after the team’s inaugural season. It is a blue background with white letters and features the white Lightning bolt logo on the left side.

In 2020, the Lightning ranked 47th in popularity among the specialty plates with 11,171 issued. That’s up from 9,500 a year earlier and nearly double the total of 5,654 sold in 2015, the year the Lightning lost to the Chicago Black Hawks in the Stanley Cup finals. As of June, the number had grown to 12,076, said Millan.

As might be expected, the top three counties for vehicles registered with Lightning plates are Hillsborough, 4,156; Pinellas, 2,279 and Pasco, 1,635

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ plate ranked 10th in popularity in 2020, with 41,004 issued, according to the state. That number has since increased to 46,763 as of June, according to statistics provided by Millan.

The most coveted sports specialty plate belongs to the Miami Heat. It ranked sixth, with more than 51,500 issued in 2020.

Hockey clearly is not as popular as basketball among south Florida motorists. The state issued less than 2,000 Florida Panther specialty plates in 2020. That puts the team, ousted by the Lightning in the first round of the playoffs, cemented in 90th place.

See story from Tampa Bay Times here.