Auction tally respectable, but definite signs of market weakness.
The first of four auctions at the TRAFFIC conference in New York has concluded. Moniker sold about $100,000 worth of domains, with the bulk of them in the $xxx to low $x,xxx range. The results were respectable, but definitely show that buyers are skittish right now.
The most expensive domain in the auction, CD.com, failed to meet its reserve of $176,480. Even if it had hit the reserve, that’s $100,000 less than the domain sold for at TRAFFIC two years ago. There were bids of up to $150,000, but don’t let anyone tell you that’s a sign of money left on the table: the buyer knew what the reserve price was and still bid $26,480 less than it.
Perhaps a bigger sign of weakness was in the lower-tier one word domains. These domains, such as staffed.com, hording.com, and educates.com, don’t have much value as parked domains and have awkward suffixes, but a year or two ago could have sold in the mid $x,xxx range. Tonight none of them sold for more than $1,200.
I think the best value in the auction was Absent.com at $1,600. There’s a big market for workplace absenteeism, and this is a great generic domain for one of the service providers in this area to use for marketing. I had my eye on this domain, but had technical difficulties logging into the auction and joined about 20 domains late. I think it had something to do with Firefox 3 (or caching therein) as I was able to log in using Internet Explorer.
The top sale was Men.org at $12,500. Guys.org sold for $9,420 last year.
Much like the stock market performance of the past couple days, it’s not like people have run for the hills. They’re just being a little more conservative. Hopefully bidders will let loose for the final three auctions.
David says
Andrew – What do you make of the fact that Rick set his reserve for CD.COM at $176K when he paid $275K for it 2 years ago?
Am I missing something, or does this smell fishy?
robark says
I am looking into this before I make a decision about this.
How can he be willing to take a $100,000 loss,especially the notorious mr800king?????
Andrew says
It’s possible he was doing it to help promote the overall auction, since he stands to profit from a successful auction(s) and show. Still a drastic move if you ask me.
robark says
another flowers.mobi???? I remember this one!
David says
http://www.dmueller.com/2007/04/08/people/rick-schwartz-domain-blog-press-release/
There were unconfirmed rumors that Rick never really paid $200K for FLOWERS.MOBI. In other words, he got some kind of kickback to offset his purchase just to make the purchase look legit.
But when you factor in this CD.COM issue, it’s hard to give Rick the benefit of doubt.
Can anyone offer any evidence/info to the contrary?
Lda says
Disagree if you will, but CDs as we know them are a dead technology going forward. Soon, DVDs will probably follow them into extinction. How much would we now pay for floppyDisk.com ? Is there another high profile use for CD.com ? Probably, but $170K ?
Bruno says
Keep in mind two-letter domain names do sometimes get lucky, and also serve as big corporations’ acronyms. We have seen such sales in the past, and some have reached high 6 figure amounts.
Matt says
I actually talked to Rick when he first bought that domain, and I remember asking him “Don’t you think you paid too much for something that was popular maybe 10-15 years ago?”… since we already had news of blu-ray and hd-dvd at that time.
He answered something along the lines of “CD” being for CDs as in BANK CDs. Which obviously makes sense.
But, you also are forgetting, they I think take a 15% commission of each sale. Therefore, if he bought this domain for 270k in the past, he actually bought it for about 229.5k, since he doesn’t have to pay himself commission. He also is using his own service once again for selling it, so he doesn’t owe anyone commission for the sale, therefore at the end – it’s all pretty much within the range that be got it for.
Matt
Bill says
“Is there another high profile use for CD.com ?”
CD also = Certificate of Deposit
Joe Dvaison says
Did anyone consider that he has a MUCH BETTER investment that he could make with the 176k that makes whatever he paid for CD.com totally moot?
It makes no sense to keep capital tied up like that if you have BETTER investments to make.
It’s not a “loss”.
monte says
Hello Andrew and all,
I actually felt that last night showed signs of strength. We had a 70% sell through rate which was more than even I expected. The prices on these domains were lower compared to last year on purpose….due to the economy and the names were more related to what is going on in our world today and tomorrow.
CD.com was in fact sold 3 years ago at $275K and put back on the block at the last minute for $176K…which did include our commission. We did have a buyer in the room almost biting at $155K on it. Remember there was no marketing of that name prior since it was literally added two days ago and it just may have sold if we had it a month ago.
CD has a few different meanings – music, compact disk, Certificate of Deposit, stands for a tons of companies with those initials as well so its a well diversified name to build upon and will be offered in the extended auction with all the other premium names on Thursday.
Premium live auction is on Thursday at 3PM EST and I think it will be a decent day even with the questionable internal show and external economic environment.
thanks for everyone’s support!
Andrew says
Monte – thanks for adding your comments. I know you’ve been honest about the state of domains in the past, even saying about 6-9 months ago that there would be some weakness in domains, so it’s good to hear that you were happy with the results. Let’s hope the rest of the auctions go well.
As for CD.com, I think it was a good buy at $175k, regardless of what people think about the connotation “compact disc”. That’s cheaper than just about any two character .com sale we’ve seen.
Emil @KING.NET says
I expected this outcome but not this low. Thank you Andrew for keeping us update.
Regards,
EMIL @KING.NET
Emil @KING.NET says
I would like to see Rick’s results today. I hope it will show a positive results.
Regards,
EMIL
monte says
the auction last night was a low and no reserve auction….the results were high with almost all exceeding their reserve prices:
Domain
Sale Price
Men.org
$12,500.00
CashiersCheck.com
$7,000.00
NetworkingJobs.com
$7,000.00
GunRange.com
$6,500.00
KinkySex.net
$6,000.00
Groping.com
$5,000.00
Rattlers.com
$4,500.00
Sperm.net
$3,750.00
SeafoodRestaurant.com
$3,500.00
ExecutiveJetCharter.com
$2,900.00
Beef.net
$2,750.00
CollegeNewspaper.com
$2,750.00
SelfMotivation.com
$2,600.00
CommonStock.com
$2,500.00
Scooper.com
$2,500.00
Admitted.com
$2,250.00
NutritionalGuidelines.com
$2,100.00
Society.net
$2,000.00
Absent.com
$1,600.00
Slashers.com
$1,500.00
Staffed.com
$1,200.00
Wool.net
$1,200.00
ElectricScooters.us
$1,100.00
WirelessIntercom.com
$1,100.00
AlternativeFuel.org
$1,000.00
Educates.com
$1,000.00
Cruises.mobi
$900.00
Donuts.org
$900.00
FrozenDaiquiri.com
$900.00
Children.mobi
$850.00
Hording.com
$800.00
LaserPrinterCartridges.com
$800.00
HedgeFundMarket.com
$700.00
StenoPads.com
$700.00
DirtyJokes.net
$650.00
CreditCrunch.net
$600.00
Inflation.info
$600.00
Feels.com
$500.00
Heating.net
$500.00
JewelExporter.com
$400.00
LocateCars.com
$400.00
LowInterestGovernmentLoans.com
$400.00
NewMovieDownload.com
$400.00
LateSnack.com
$300.00
Decorators.tv
$200.00
RVSP.net
$150.00
the premium auction is on Thursday and should generate much more revenue and metrics for the industry.
Andrew says
@ Matt – my guess is Rick doesn’t get a full 15% commission discount. Sure he gets something for providing the venue to Moniker, but I would hope it’s not more than the standard cut he gets regardless of if he bought the domain or someone else did.
Richard Meyer says
I believe most of the domains went cheap.
Probably because of the economy, difficulty in connecting, some not realizing they could bid and some forgeting about the initial auction.
It is back to the same problem, the auction was only reaching the “domainer to domainer” level. The circle of purchasers needs to expand.
The other auctions should be further insightful of the stability of the valuation of generic domains. We will know more by thursday evening.
Aren’t most stocks trading off their highs right now? However, Wall St. speculates they will go up sometime in the future. When? Who knows?
Otherwise, they would sell everything and go to totally cash.
We might draw the same correlation to domains and their market value.