At the end of the run of blue plates, when the reflective graphc plates started being produced,
New Jersey had a whole bunch of leftover plate blanks which had already been painted blue.

Initially, the blue blanks were not used for anything.
But in around 1996 or so, the state started using them by attaching reflective steeting to the unused blue blanks.
Who knows ... maybe they found a bunch of them in storage and wanted to use them up !

... and then the plates were embossed and the letters were painted ("inked", really) and it looks like they were clearcoated (or at least some of them were).
This process produced plates that looked like this:

Sometimes you can tell from the front of the plate that it is made on a blue painted blank, as there may be
marks around the bolt holes, scratches on the plate which expose the blue color, or
blue vertical lines on one or both sides of the plate where the sheeting does not cover.

These unique plates were used for ten different types from 1996 to around 2000 or so...
passenger, commercial, tractor, trailer, apportioned, school vehicles (S1 and S2), and government vehicles (MG, CG and SG).

Check out the other pages in this section for information on the different types of these "blue back" plates.

Note - I show front and back of the plates.
Some of the plates are not in my collection, but are obviously blue back plates because of blue marks on the front,
or the blue strip down one side or the other.
For these, I have generated pictures of the backs.