I learned to fly during 1998 and 1999 using a C172. I soloed in it, did all my training in it, and took my check ride in it. For the other ratings, I flew other airplanes. This airplane was personally owned by my flight instructor at the time.
Fast forward about 3.5 years, some goon crashes the airplane when landing between a valley of trees at a small airport (windshear caused the accident). No serious injuries, which is the good news, but the airplane was toast. Shortly after the accident, the aircraft was deregistered, freeing up the tail number.
I recently got it in my crawl to see if the tail number was free and it appeared to be. So, I dropped the nominal fee to reserve the tail number for an aircraft that I will own in the future and I just received confirmation that the tail number is now reserved in my name. Obviously, if an airplane I own has a good paint job, I am not going to mess it up by trying to affix this number. But, I figure if I ever repaint an aircraft that I own, it’d be a perfect time to utilize this tail number that sort of represents where it all started for me.
Kind of cool, eh?