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1950–2003 · THE PREFIX, VERIFIED FIRST-HAND
North Liberty never issued a plate, but every plate its residents carried said where they were from: the Bureau's own county table — "Indiana County Numbers and County Names," read first-hand — prints "71 St. Joseph," and the Bureau's paperwork styles the county's branches "St. Joseph-71" (the 16 February 2021 notice). Under the county-prefix systems the number led the plate: on the 1999–2003 issue, a South Bend–issued plate ran in the 71E class — the county number with its branch letter — and a Walkerton-issued plate carried Walkerton's letter, which no county running has yet extracted (gap G-W4B-3, shared with Walkerton's GAP-W10-BMV-5). There is no North Liberty branch letter, and none is invented: a North Liberty plate was a 71 plate through somebody else's counter. The prefix systems' ceilings print as ceilings, not registrations: 69,993 combinations under the 1950 scheme, 239,976 under the 1963 scheme. The county-code history carries the county's standing conflict with it, now numbered in this register as the carried county conflict (its twin stands in Walkerton's running as GAP-W10-BMV-6): Conflict C112: the 1950 county codes print BB through BH in the plate-history source (platehistory / Mike Hicks) and BB through BK and BN in the ShopLicensePlates record — the graphic-issue codes for this county, two ranges, unmerged, exactly as the Mishawaka package carries the pair. The first registrations ever made for this ground — the 1913-era countywide figures' Liberty Township share — were not reached in any annual report read (gap G-W4B-1). Since 2012 the plate itself has closed the circle the mail opened: standard plates are made to order and mailed from Indianapolis, and the counter's role is the transaction, not the tin.
Principal sources: Indiana BMV, "Indiana County Numbers and County Names" (read first-hand); BMV branch notice, 16 February 2021 (read whole); the plate-history record as carried in the Mishawaka package (pointer for the pair's carriers).