In the oil rich United Arab Emirates, a single vanity license plate with the western number “1″ on it sold for record 52.2 million dirhams, the equivalent of $14.3 million dollars, equivalent of ~55 Crore Rupees at a charity auction. The auction took place at the swanky 7 Star Emirates Palace Hotel in Abu Dhabi.

This bid shadowed the previous highest bid for no. 5 licence plate which sold for a record 6.8 million $.

The no. ‘1′ licence plate has been bought by 25 year old Saeed Abdul Ghafour Khour, a member of the wealthy Abu Dhabi family. “I bought it because I want to be the best in the world” he said after the winning bid.

The sum of money was “normal” for his family, Hamdan Khouri said after the auction. I was prepared to spend as much as 100 Million dirhams (27 Million $)”.

The oil rich persian gulf countries  are driven by car culure with little or no public transport options or even pedestrain areas, these vanity plates are considered to be a matter of personal pride.

Persian Gulf license plates and most vanity plates include both Arabic and western numerals and script. The special vanity license plates auctioned off only contain a western numeral with no letters. A total of 90 licence plates were auctioned off raising a staggering 24 million $ which will be used to build a rehabilitation center for the victims of traffic accidents.