... I once had a Datsun 510, which was also known as the "Bluebird" in some parts of the world. Since you can only get seven letters on plate here, I first asked if I could get "BLUBIRD", but somebody already had it. I suppose BLUEBRD was taken too; I can't remember for sure ... this was nearly twenty years ago. Anyway, I settled on "BLUBOID". The guy who took the order had a style of printing that ought not to be allowed within several miles of that department -- mixing upper and lower case letters. So they made me "BLUBOLD" the first time around. This one only took one more try to get it right.
The ham plate, however, was a little more arduous. The first try was W5WBZ, and they didn't even make all the letters the same size! OK, so I sent that one back. So then they sent me W5YZB. I called them and some civil serpent in Santa Fe had the gall to tell me that they would try one more time, but this time if they didn't get it right they would charge me again. I certainly didn't agree to that, but I did agree that they ought to try again.
Well, the fourth time was the charm. They got it right, but by then the car I had ordered it for had died. This resulted in my current vehicle having the ham plate as its original, which I suppose is somewhat rare, at least in combination with the fact that the plate has never been on another vehicle. (We'll ignore the fact that it was technicially registered to another vehicle.)