Denny,
That's what I was thinking, something along the lines of anodizing them.
Maybe someone a little older would know for sure, but I don't think Illinois designated trucks with the B, C, D, etc. letters like they do now. The truck plates on my '50 have no letters, just a number. I know all truck plates have either front or rear stamped on them. ( My Dad told me they did this because farmers and others would only buy one set of plates for a couple of trucks, but with the " front and rear" designation on the plates they couldn't get away with it.)
The 1951 set I have is B223, a nice low number which makes the plate almost square in size. I picked them up several years ago before Illinois allowed you to run YOM plates, so the price was cheap. The fellow had several other years with the same number, had I known I would have bought more. A local license collector told me of a man in Kankakee, I believe, who has several consecutive years of the truck plates with just the number A2. He said he's been trying to get ahold of them for years.
Bob
