Oldies: The new black plates are "tribute" plates that went into circulation three or four years ago. They are available as non-personalized, but not in the original 1963-69 sequence. Instead, they are letter-three numbers-letter-number, began with the letter B and currently end with the number zero
(so B123A0). They're changing the first letter each time they hit the end, and I'm seeing "N" on the road now. Once they exhaust "Z", the zero at the end of the plate will become a one, and so on.
Being six characters but using a font that allows seven, they center the letters and numbers in one batch, with no break allowed. So really, all they have in common with the original '63-'69 plates is that they are yellow on black (and because of the required reflectorization that didn't exist in the 60s, they look a little different).
The DMV, about eight years ago, started a project to allow "tribute" plates for the 1956 black-on-yellow, the 1963 yellow-on-black and the 1969 yellow-on-blue. They needed 20,000 advance orders. Only the 1963 yellow-on-blacks got them. They marketed all three---and the yellow-on-blacks right up until release---with old illustrations showing three letters, a space and three numbers ("SAM 123") or three numbers, a space and three letters for the blue ones ("123 SAM").
Many of the people who made the reissue possible were very unhappy to get "B123A0" or similar and raised a fuss---arguing that there are enough dead 1960s combinations that could be put back into use so that the plates would "look right". That's since died down and the average person is fine with them. Most are personalized, since the original black plates couldn't be---California personalized began during the blue plate era.
As for what to do at the end of the sequence. Eight digits makes the characters smaller, more bunched together and harder to read, which defeats the purpose of a license plate. When there is a solution such as simply flipping the sequence to "123ABC1", it makes sense to use it. Yes, you get 50 years instead of 100, but there's a very open question about whether we'll still have physical license plates with letters and numbers in 50 years, and whether the arrival of self-driving shared vehicles (which presumably would wear California livery plates, which are different) will reduce the number of private vehicles sold to where the new sequence won't exhaust itself as quickly.
And finally---the 1AAA123 sequence that stopped early when the sunset plates beginning with 2 arrived---aren't orphans. They're being used on the Lake Tahoe, Yosemite and Coastal Commission special interest plates. I've seen plates as far as 1V-something for those. They are so low-circulation that they burn through a first letter after the "1" each decade.
And David's right, this has nothing to do with radio---but we've found more common ground that proves we're all geeks on some level.
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