California will take a small ice age to actually send you the sticker and paperwork
Sounds strange to me (and since @jerwin brought in the Melbourne story) plates here come straight off the pile. You can register a car and pick up the plates on the spot (unless they are personalised). In fact I can walk into a vicroads office at any time and ask for a replacement. They just record the new number against my registration. We used to have annual stickers but its been replaced by direct access to the R&L database. Police cars have OCR gear. They get a printout of your history back to birth just by driving behind you.
I used to work above a registration and licensing office and I loaned screwdrivers to people on occasions when they needed to change their plates over.
