Domain name was part of a bankruptcy auction.
Domain investor and DomainTools founder Jay Westerdal has acquired the domain names Vanity.com, Vanity.net and the Vanity.com® trademark in a Chapter 11 bankruptcy auction.
The auction was for assets of Vanity Shop of Grand Forks, Inc. and the court has approved the sale.
Westerdal bid $340,000 in a Chapter 11 telephone auction for the domain name. According to the auction transcript (pdf), a company in The Netherlands called Xenax was the initial high bidder at $330,000. After the creditor committee conferred, Westerdal chimed in saying he was on the other line and wanted to bid again at $340,000. Xenax objected but they accepted Westerdal’s bid anyway.
Vanity.com has some history. The domain was lost in a very bad UDRP decision and then the owner sued to stop the transfer. The companies later settled and the owner transferred the domain name to Vanity Shop.
Westerdal founded DomainTools but later sold the company. Currently, he operates new top level domain names such as .feedback.
Hilco Streambank marketed the bankruptcy assets.
adam says
New headline “New TLD and Crypto space investor buys “OLD school” .com premium domain for $340k”
Ron says
What crypto coin is Jay marketing, contrib?
Meyer says
The value is not just the domain but the total package. Owning the TM makes it a brand as a ecommerce site.
In other words, you are buying a potential business with automatic name recognition.
Plus, I suspect there is sizable traffic to the domain from the operation of the chain of retail stores and ecommerce business.
I think it was an excellent purchase.
Meyer says
Just read on Elliot’s site why Jay bought it. Never thought about using it for that purpose.
However, if he uses it for that purpose, the TM is not as valuable.
Joe says
No!
Buying the TM is only useful if he plans to market the goods covered by the tm
If not the tm is worthless