A cherished registration contains a sequence of characters which forms a registration mark of significant age, and typically have some sort of value to their owner. When number plates were first introduced in 1903, prior to the suffix system coming into play in 1963, all cars displayed a registration number which contained an area marker and a randomly assigned number, which meant that there was no way of identifying the age of the vehicle it was assigned to.  For this reason, cherished reg plates are otherwise known as dateless number plates.
Cherished registration plates can appear in a number of different styles, with either 1, 2, 3 or 4 numbers, followed by 1, 2 or 3 letters, or the reverse, with the letters coming first prior to the numbers. For example, DAD 1, RW 25 or 702 TCR could all be considered as dateless or cherished registrations.