British Columbia Movie Prop License Plates

British Columbia Film Prop License Plates

Above are some of the plates used in the filming of "My American Cousin" in the mid-1980s in and around Penticton, British Columbia. Full credit to the props people who worked on this film for nailing the colour scheme for the 1959 plate year. The prop plates are made of plastic and the screen shots are showing the plates in use on vehicles in the movie.

Above left is a screenshot from a popular BCAA commercial for home and auto insurance that aired regularly between 2007 and 2010 (or thereabouts) and which explains the presence of the text "AUTO" in the middle of the image. As can be seen, the vehicle displays a dummy BC license plate, which is easily identifiable as such by the presence of the letter "Q" in the serial.

Above right are some promotional images provided by ICBC for use on its web site or by other media outlets. The "OMG-BBQ" seems more like a vanity slogan that a valid serial for a passenger plate.

Film Props

This particular plate is thought to have been used on the television show "Smallville", that was filmed on-location in British Columbia during its run between 2001 and 2011.

Thanks to a friend of the site, we know that "The Package", a Netflix "black comedy" movie was filmed in and around Vancouver between August and October of 2017 and includes an opening sequence in which an older Acura Intergra is shown clearly displaying license plates with classic Astrographic dies and the slogan "Beautiful Evergreen State".

These plates use non-standard characters such as 'Z' in the plate number to ensure they are not mistaken for official BC plates (changing the Flag graphic might have been a good idea too).

What is interesting is that Astrographic got out of the plate making business in 2013, so these plates have probably been used in at least one other video production and are now part of a prop department somewhere in the Vancouver area and may appear again in some future film!

Having never watched the show Riverdale, we don't know if these plates were ever used in the series (they appear to have been attached to vehicles) but they do display classic Astrographic dies as well as the typical knock-off of the standard BC passenger plate design, right down to the 2002 decal.

In 1959, everyone's favourite film actor from Tasmania, Errol Flynn, had his hard partying ways finally catch up to him and he expired in Vancouver in October of that year.

In 2012, the movie "The Last Days of Robin Hood" filmed in and around Vancouver in an attempt to tell the story of Flynn's last days.

The plates shown at left are purportedly from the cars used in the shoot.

Film Props