I’m Mike, a Geordie living in West Yorkshire.

I’ve had several classic vehicles in the past – Mini’s, a Jaguar, a Yamaha FZ400rl and a Vespa ET4. I only have the Vespa now, and that’s a long-term project. I’ve been through the whole learning process – bodywork, engine work, customisation. I know how frustrating it can be, how it sucks up time and energy – but also how you feel when you look at it all finished. And that’s a great feeling. If you’ve done it and gone so far as showing your vehicle, you have my utmost respect.

The Vespa is what started this whole thing. About 5 years ago I wanted an authentic looking tax disc for it and because I’m not bad with Photoshop decided to make my own. I spent time on getting it right – colour sampling the original disc, finding the matching fonts, lining everything up – and the end result was very close to the original. Then I decided I wanted to make one of my first Mini to put in a frame – you’ll have seen her details all over the samples. And that’s when it really kicked in – I fell down a rabbit hole of creating the ‘early years’ discs, 1969 to about 1984. I did it all in an old version of Photoshop, about 19 layers per disc. At the time I didn’t even have a reason for doing it, other than it was enjoyable.

They looked great and printed out great, but I still wasn’t happy – I couldn’t do the perforations.

I was also into 3D printing so tried creating presses to make them, but that was a dismal failure. I shelved the project and just kept the edges round.

Moving forward a couple of years and my new hobby was gold plating. I was trying to use vinyl to create masks, but they needed to be tiny – too small for me to hand cut. After a bit of research I bought a 2nd hand cutting machine and got on with it. One day I was sitting at my computer and look up at the framed disc and was hit with a complete ‘light bulb’ moment – could I use the cutter to do the perforations? It turned out that I certainly could, and the tax discs as a product was born.

Again I spent far too much time sitting getting it right – hours of looking at the old discs for changes, creating the templates for the perforations and security cutouts and fighting with the cutter settings until I was happy. I also added the extra years at this point, right up to 2015.

At the time I had also been working on some funny car stickers to be used as xmas gift tags which I was selling on Etsy. I took some photos of the discs and made a listing for them – and sold one on the first day. Since then they’ve been slowly ticking along. Don’t be fooled though, this isn’t a full time business or anything, just a hobby that got out of hand – buying a disc won’t make me the next millionaire!

I wish I could say it’s all been fun, but Etsy like to make things difficult for sellers. Until recently I had to rely on the customers providing all of the information in their order notes, which they often didn’t. I could only message them back on Etsy with the proof image or questions, which relied on them reading the messages – something guest customers especially don’t always do. More recently they’ve added the option to request 5 fields of information which has helped, but I wanted to give you more – different fonts, text colour options and a big one for me – disc aging, so they don’t look brand new. Etsy also like to charge you for everything – if they could charge you for breathing I’m sure they would. I’ve had to put my prices up twice which I wasn’t happy about. And we’re not even going to mention the Post Office.

From my side I also wanted to speed up my process, so I’ve spent the last month creating a program to help with that. It’s working well, if I’m at my computer when you place an order I can probably have the proof in your inbox pretty damn quickly.

And that’s where we are now. If you’ve made it through to the end, I just need to thank you for reading my drivel. Have you bought your disc yet? If not, go do it!