Make up to £1,600 with your old tax disc

Marc Crosby 16th Aug 2021 8 Comments

Reading Time: 4 minutes

You might remember that, back in the October of 2014, the little works of art we called tax discs were scrapped and a new system of electronic tax monitoring was introduced.

Although your tax disc might still be glued to your windscreen, whether because of its sentimental value or your pure and utter laziness, did you know that it could potentially fetch you a whole load of money?

That’s right. Some tax discs have even gone for up to £1,000 and now, more than six years after they became useless, they’re still climbing in value. In fact, a collection was sold in May 2021 on eBay for £1,666!

Who’s really going to buy an old tax disc?
How much is my tax disc worth?
What should I do with my tax disc at the moment?
Where can I sell my tax disc?

Who’s really going to buy an old tax disc?

Although old tax discs might not sound like something many people will want to be shelling out a lot of cash for, there are people who specifically collect car tax discs. They’re called velologists.

People were already selling tax discs before production was stopped, but now that there are only a limited amount of them left, the longer you keep them, the more valuable they will be.

The highest amount paid for a tax disc so far is £1,087.80, which was for a disc from 1921 – the year car tax discs were first introduced.
The previous record was a disc from the same batch which sold for a whopping £810.

Tax discs have become collectible just like old stamps, and who knows how much a velologist might be willing to pay you for your old tax disc one day.

Did you know that since 1921, 1.7 billion tax discs have been issued by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA)? The dream would be to line them all up in chronological order as they would encircle the world three times!

How much is my tax disc worth?

You could laugh at the price tag of some of these tax discs and say that they are too good to be true.

And while that is the case for one hopeful who set the price of their worthless disc at a mental £180,000, most will fetch in around £40 which is still a nice amount for a pretty piece of paper.

Discs from the 1970s in average condition, for example, are only selling for about £19.99 at the moment.

So to make money you could either start collecting yourself or wait until your particular disc is in demand.

But collectors are often most enthused about the first and last of the items they collect, so your most recent car tax disc could well be the one that will hit the jackpot.

The recent collection that sold on eBay for £1,666 were five discs all from the same vehicle, dating from 1922-1924.

the little perforations

If you have a disc that didn’t have perforated paper around it, you should definitely keep it. The DVLA ran out of perforated paper as the tax discs came to the end, so a few lucky people received non-perforated tax discs in the last year or so. We say lucky because these discs are rare and are likely to accumulate the most in price over the years.

Stephen Challis of BritishTaxDiscs says the biggest windfalls can be made from unusual tax discs such as those from a rare vehicle. Some tax discs were also issued with errors that make them more valuable, such as in 1954 when the Government released a new design only to discover that they had printed “1953” on them by mistake. Instead of recalling the tax discs, they printed a black rectangle over the “3”, making this messy bit of history a particular favourite for collectors.

The exact return you can expect to get from your old tax disc is still unknown, however, and it’s hard to say for certain exactly how much veleologists will be willing to pay in the future. While some sell on eBay for 99p, others sell for £250.

What should I do with my tax disc at the moment?

Hold onto it! It may not be worth much right now but there’s no harm in keeping it safe and seeing how much you can get for it in the future.

Also, ask around friends and family and see if they will give you theirs. You could keep them all and even try and build up a set as a whole lot of discs from 1940, for example, are listed for as much as £480 on the auction site Collecticus.

It’s very important that you keep the tax disc in good condition. Like all collectors, veleologists put a big emphasis on the condition of the items they collect, so if you damage your tax disc you could radically lower its value or even make it worthless altogether.

Keep yours in a stiff envelope (labelled so that you don’t throw it away) and make sure the disc stays in pristine condition.