It is a personal decision on whether to leave or remove the "license plate #". Personally, if it is easy to remove and will not incur any damage, I would take it off as I prefer models to be original as much as possible.
As Greg mentioned, the gold trim model is pretty hard to find-- especially since the gold trim doesn't always stand out that much.
I've had the gold trimmed model (below) for about 5 years and it took some searching to find one.
Bill

