THIS week, I have discovered that I am a velologist. An accidental velologist, but a velologist all the same.

I have some examples of my velology in front of me – they're round, the size of a drinks coaster with perforations around the edge, and they have different colours depending on the year of their issue. My oldest is 2007 which is a dull purple; 2008 was a rich reddy-pink but I think 2009 – a bright Manchester City blue – is my favourite.

My velological run is complete to 2014 – crimson-pink – and there it must end because on Wednesday, car tax discs reached the end of the road. After 93 years, they became obsolete – now numberplate recognition cameras will check that your vehicle is taxed.

A velologist is a car tax disc collector – this word comes from the first letters of vehicle excise licence plus "ology" meaning the study of. I'm an accident velologist because I just stuffed each year's disc into the windscreen holder and was too lazy to dispose of the old ones.

If I were a true velologist, I would not have removed the tax disc's "selvage" – an old weaving term for the edges of a cloth which is applied by velologists to the square edges that are torn off the circular tax disc. Removing the selvage lowers the disc's value.

The most expensive tax disc cost a velologist £810.30. It was from 1921, the year it became compulsory to display a disc on your windscreen, although Vehicle Excise Duty had been introduced on all "mechanically propelled vehicles" in 1889.

Early discs were issued either annually or quarterly. The quarterly ones ran out on June 30, September 30 and December 30, as you would expect, but also on March 24. This, apparently, was because in the old days, motorists laid up their cars over winter until Easter when they dusted them off for a holiday run. It is said that by setting March 25 as the start of the second quarter, the taxman ensured that a motorist always had to buy a new disc before embarking on his Easter run.

In those early days, the revenue from the disc was hypothecated to road maintenance. As all other taxes went into the general pot, Winston Churchill called it "all nonsense…an outrage upon the sovereignty of Parliament and upon common sense” and in 1937 it too was diverted to the Treasury.

In 1921, people used scissors to cut out their black-and-white discs, but colour – green – was introduced in 1923, and perforations in 1938. However, it is believed that a German bomb hit the perforating equipment in 1942 and so they went back to cut-outs until 1952.

Studying my discs like a true velologist, I can see they are almost as well printed as a banknote – in 1962, motorists passed off Guinness bottle labels as discs so anti-counterfeit techniques were introduced.

I think I'll keep my discs and perhaps one day pass them onto my grandchildren who will look at my colourful collection and be amazed as I recount how every year every single motorist in the country went through the ridiculously fiddly process of tearing a poorly perforated circle out of an unwilling square. The things we did in the past...

n If you have an old tax disc, email me a scan or photo of it: chris.lloyd@nne.co.uk