It used to be a standard ritual around the start of every year: unscrewing last year’s license plates from your car, often in the cold, and installing shiny new ones.

In the modern era of renewal stickers and staggered registration periods, swapping out license plates annually is a lost tradition.

The ritual of nailing last year’s license plates up on the wall of the garage (a habit much appreciated by license plate collectors in the following decades) was such a routine part of life that it was used by car companies to illustrate the long lifespans of their products.

The turn of each new year would be marked by new colors or designs on every vehicle, with the announcement or speculation of what form the new year’s license plates would take often driving excitement (or at least mild interest) among the general public.

Those days are over, but at least the need to unscrew dirty, wet license plates in the coldest part of the year are gone too. Cheers to that!