DQZ.com among the leaders at NameJet over the past week.
When it comes to 3-letter .COM domains, value is something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Enough domain investors agree to pay within a certain range based on scarcity, observed sales, and the opportunity to resell to one another that a given LLL.com is often purchased without reference to any conceivable use or meaning. That could easily be the case with NameJet’s $12.4k sale of DQZ.com last week; but I think some bidders at least had more specific, less arbitrary aims in mind.
“DQZ” has a few meanings, believe it or not. Digi-Key runs an AdWords campaign in “DQZ” search results to sell integrated circuit components recognizable by a serial number ending in “DQZ”. They’ll ship 5,000 tiny audio codecs to your doorstep for just $37,620. Not a likely buyer, though, since they have a zillion microchips to sell. This acronym is also the name of a Spanish chemical company specializing in composite materials, Distribuidora Química Zaragoza, which uses .ES. Moreover, “DQZ” is short for the city of Daquizhuang in northern China. I found some imaginative architectural drawings of a DQZ cultural center that are worth a look. Along with plans for the district of Meixi that I ran across when reporting on the $27.1k sale of Meixi.com 2 months ago, this proposal suggests that China may be undergoing an architectural renaissance … perhaps reflected by purchases within the domain market.
Other expired domain sales at NameJet included 4 retail-priced LLLL.com’s: a trademark squared, TTMM.com ($6.8k); a Stephen Fry CVCV, QIGO.com ($4.1k); almost a food additive, MSGI.com ($2.9k); and a sneeze, ICHU.com ($5k). Those results beat last week’s trend for high LLLL.com sales. Oh, and add the straggler, BBOT.com ($1.1k). Not bad for a robot.
GlobalMall.com ($8.5k) could be intended as an upgrade for AMSGlobalMall.com, “the largest South Asian mall in America”, which I wouldn’t have guessed is located in Norcross, Georgia. Seeing BitcoinTrader.com sell for $4.2k is no surprise, since many domain investors dabble in the cryptocurrency. More surprising is the sudden flurry of “casino” domains. Casinos are frequently a lucrative niche within the domain space, but I can’t remember ever seeing 7 sales from NameJet during 1 week: CasinoDownload.com ($4.1k), DownloadCasino.com ($3.4k), CasinoChat.com ($2.9k), TopTenCasino.com ($499), CasinoHome.com ($324), OnlyCasino.com ($220), and CasinoHongKong.com ($80). All 7 of those domains belonged to 1 person, who theoretically lost about $12k by letting them expire. One buyer, whom domain investors will recognize, purchased 5 of the 7.
Domain Name | End $ | Domain Name | End $ |
---|---|---|---|
DQZ.com | 12401 | GlobalMall.com | 8500 |
TTMM.com | 6800 | ICHU.com | 5004 |
BitcoinTrader.com | 4200 | QIGO.com | 4100 |
CasinoDownload.com | 4100 | Borrows.com | 3901 |
DownloadCasino.com | 3400 | MSGI.com | 2919 |
CasinoChat.com | 2875 | HorseBridles.com | 1900 |
Negri.com | 1690 | FaithGroup.com | 1409 |
ExTax.com | 1300 | WineNot.com | 1281 |
Alexus.com | 1125 | BBOT.com | 1109 |
TexasAccident Lawyer.com |
1009 | MobileIn.com | 1005 |
SP7.com | 999 | MedCel.com | 920 |
SeattleFilm.com | 880 | Favon.com | 830 |
Recirca.com | 779 | UrbanExploring.com | 746 |
773.org | 745 | Phico.com | 735 |
MasterCable.com | 710 | Tadai.com | 630 |
Vibrate.net | 603 | MagnetSchool.com | 575 |
MoneyDealer.com | 500 | TopTenCasino.com | 499 |
EAV.org | 467 | AXZO.com | 441 |
IXUS.com | 365 | AlaskaTrails.com | 328 |
CasinoHome.com | 324 | DKNC.com | 311 |
VividOnline.com | 269 | Tweek.net | 267 |
03066.com | 243 | OnlyCasino.com | 220 |
UNFM.com | 210 | HHLR.com | 210 |
MGNH.com | 191 | SyrahBistro.com | 180 |
WPLB.com | 135 | MyCharmingKids.net | 122 |
PhilEmbassy- Bangkok.net |
120 | WordpressTips.net | 98 |
BaxterStation.com | 89 | CasinoHongKong.com | 80 |
RealWarriors.com | 79 | HUDMortgages.com | 79 |
As puns go, WineNot.com ($1.3k) is worth a chuckle / smirk / eye roll. For a bland palette cleanser, take HUDMortgages.com ($79). (For people outside the USA, HUD is our Department of Housing and Urban Development.) Some states have separate “magnet school” programs that offer kids specialized curricula – say, in the sciences or performing arts. Most children don’t get to go, which explains the value in MagnetSchool.com ($575).
MedCel.com ($920) matches a Brazilian site for medical residencies. MobileIn.com ($1k) is a product offered through Line6.com, which describes it as “The Highest Quality Guitar System for iPhone and iPad”. Those domains match particular brands. But HorseBridles.com ($1.9k) shows that generic, exact-match, product domains haven’t stopped selling. The same is true of domains for locally based professionals, as witnessed by TexasAccidentLawyer.com ($1k).
Phico.com ($735) should replace PhicoTX.co.uk. No, the United Kingdom isn’t lucky enough to have a Texas of its own. They’re using “TX” to stand for “therapeutics”. Remember the Alamo? It’s between Chittlehampton and Clapworthy.
couponpages says
My rule of thumb for short domains like DQZ is to think about each letter as a Scrabble tile. In Scrabble, common letters have low numbers, and letters that are rarely used have high letters.
So for a LLL domain, the best score would be 3, based on 3 one point letters, giving you lots of possible words that start with them. The worst would be 30 (3×10)
DQZ scores 22. That’s pretty hard to turn into something that means something.
For domains with numbers, it gets more complicated, because some number combinations mean something, like 212, 90210, etc., but as a rule of thumb the only numbers that potentially add value are 2 and 4, because they are often used for “to” and “for”.
Domainer Extraordinaire says
DQZ.com didn’t expire. 100 domainers would dig up a 3 letter .com owner from his grave before it would expire.
Andrew Allemann says
Yes, it expired. They’d try to dig him up, but you can’t always track them down.
Domainer Extraordinaire says
I don’t consider names yanked from their customer’s accounts, renewed and auctioned off as being expired, if that was the case. A real expiration would have a new creation date, not Creation Date: 27-nov-1999.
Andrew Allemann says
The majority of good names are like this. It expired. If it wasn’t done this way, it would have gone to full deletion. For all intents and purposes, it was an expired domain sale. If was, after all, expired.
Joseph Peterson says
I filter domains that went to auction as part of the normal expiration process from domains that were listed by an owner while the domain is under their control. My intent is to report only the former category in these weekly articles.
This extra processing involves a lot of custom code and extra manual steps. I’m sure that I make mistakes, and I genuinely want people to point out those mistakes so that I can improve my procedures. Really, please tell me!
In this case, it sounds like we’re talking about the difference between pre-release and pending delete auctions. Both are stages in the expiration cycle. While reporting GoDaddy expired auctions, results were mainly of the pre-release category. At NameJet, the two are intermixed; but even there pre-release auctions chart higher and more frequently than pending delete auctions (which would be on their second pass).
The creation date won’t change for successful pre-release expired auctions.
KC says
When it comes to Chinese domains, I use Baidu for my research. Baidu showed several sites related to DQZ. One is dqzsteel.cn which is a simple site full of steel ads. 520dqz.com is more of a general news site. dqz8.com lists houses for sale in the city of Daqiuzhuang.
According to ename.cn, the domain was promoted to be associated with “当权者、大泉州、地球站、丁桥镇、电气站” (authorities, geo, earth station, geo, electric station).
The best candidate I could find is dqz.tv, where DQZ is a game console.
Joseph Peterson says
Thanks for the info!
Fromm says
I was wondering as well about those many lots of 3 letter .coms expiring, how ist that so many registrants actually let such domains expire?
also, i observed something rather unique this week on namejet platform:
I followed a pre-release auction for the domain ddq.com with the high bid of $5,000 and it looked as if it closed at this bid. As of right now though I see the very same domain again, now at public auction with a high bid of $14,100 (auction runs for another 18 hrs). what am i missing? where were all those bidders a few days ago when it was auctioned off for 5K as part of the pre-release??
Joseph Peterson says
What you’re seeing with DDQ.com applies to other domains as well. NameJet was promoting a portfolio of about 600 domains, including DDQ.com. They were all listed as pre-release. Those I’ve sampled have been converted to public auctions after the backorder deadline. So I’m guessing that the $5,000 you saw was part of the lead up to the public auction.
Since these domains aren’t part of the expiration cycle, I don’t include them in my weekly articles on the expired domain market.
You’d have to ask NameJet for clarification on the process behind these public auctions.
Fromm says
Thx Joseph. I wrote to Namejet for clarification and will post their answer here when i hear back.