robin brown

The News Journal

Early Friday evening%2C the bid on Biden%27s tag stood at %24177.50.

Under Delaware law%2C the veep%27s old tag cannot be re-registered for current use %u2013 display purposes only.

A souvenir of Vice President Joe Biden's Delaware senatorship is on the auction block, just in time for holiday gift-giving.

His official state license plate from junior-senator days is up for bid on eBay.

True, the tag listed at ebay.to/13hI7mt is no low-number black-and-white puppy.

But as marketing man and social media maven Ken Grant told The News Journal, "Delawareans have an interesting relationship with our license plates – from the valuable low digit plates that sometimes cost more than the vehicles they are on to our legislative plates that cause some of us to try to guess who is driving based on their initials."

Grant said Friday evening he expects the auction of Biden's tag will stir excitement among select collectors.

The one-of-a-kind, expired state license plate marked a landmark in the life and political career of the highest elected official from Delaware in history. (Yeah, yeah, born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, but grew up here and was elected as a Delawarean.)

First issued when he was 29, the Senate tag was created for the Kennedy Democrat after a young-man-for-change-and-equality campaign and tireless public shoe-leather combined to lift the budding lawyer from New Castle County Council to a state-history-making political upset.

As a nearly no-chance underdog, Biden had filled his party's ballot against longtime Republican incumbent J. Caleb Boggs, who was said to have delayed retirement at the personal request of then-President Nixon to avoid a primary between two potential GOP successors, Rep. Pete du Pont and Wilmington Mayor Harry G. "Hal" Haskell Jr.

Biden's victory, interpreted as a new-generation harbinger, was made even more poignant and historic because he was sworn in as one of the youngest U.S. senators in history, sworn in at the hospital bedside of sons Beau and Hunter after a tragic crash killed his first wife, Neilia, and 1-year old daughter, Naomi.

And then he got the license plate, which expired at another life-landmark, the year he married Jill Tracy Jacobs, with whom he was smitten on a blind date. Yada, yada, vice president.

Under Delaware law, the veep's old tag cannot be re-registered for current use – display purposes only.

With hammer-time of 9:18 p.m. Tuesday, it is offered with free expedited shipping for pre-Christmas delivery as the only item now posted for sale by "fuddrumper" of Kemblesville, Pennsylvania, listed as an eBay member since 1997, with 100 percent positive feedback in 34 ratings over the last 12 months.

But Biden's tag, with no "BUY IT NOW" price, is unlikely to set a sales record.

The most paid for a Delaware license plate – black-and-white No. 6 – was $675,000 by developer Anthony Fusco of Wilmington, with live-auction bidding in Rehoboth Beach by his grandson 25-year-old Frank Vassallo IV of Wilmington.

Early Friday evening, the bid on Biden's tag stood at $177.50.

Contact robin brown at (302) 324-2856 or rbrown@delawareonline.com. Find her on Facebook and follow her on Twitter @rbrowndelaware.