In December the domain name 45.com sold for $280,000
Today the NorthJerseyNews.com told the story behind the sale including how the seller of the domain name, Glen DiGirolamo got the domain as collateral for a $15K loan.
Its an usual story of how a professional pool player got the biggest payday of his life by selling a domain name.
Here are some quotes of Mr. DiGirolamo from the story which you should read in full.
“”The story behind DiGirolamo’s recent quarter-million-dollar windfall is a window into the weird, arcane and occasionally profitable world of Internet domain names. It began with a bad loan to a billiards player.
Eight years ago, DiGirolamo handed $15,000 to a friend he met while shooting pool. DiGirolamo did not charge any interest, and the friend promised to repay the loan in 60 days.
DiGirolamo never got a penny back. But, as collateral, the friend had given him a custom-made pool cue worth $3,000 to $4,000 and the rights to several Internet domain names.
One of the names seemed at first glance to be as valuable as a piece junk mail — “45.com.”
Who knew?
“It’s crazy,” DiGirolamo said the other day. “It’s just crazy.”””
“”wasn’t playing pool, he also started dabbling in Internet domain names.
“I used to stay in my office until 2 in the morning and just think of names,” he said.
In several cases, his domain names attracted buyers. For example, an investor in Finland paid $4,000 for DiGirolamo’s “hellpoker.com.” Another investor, in Canada, paid $2,500 for “dovecorp.com.”
It was after a billiards tournament that DiGirolamo met a fellow player who needed a $15,000 loan.
DiGirolamo chuckles now as he remembers the conversation about the loan. He never asked, for example, what the man needed the money for. In fact, what is amazing is how trusting DiGirolamo seemed to be, taking a pool cue stick and the domain name rights as collateral.
After the loan wasn’t paid, DiGirolamo established his own 45.com website for his business. That’s where he attracted attention.
Soon after he established the website, he began to receive hard-to-believe offers to buy the name.
“Someone contacted me and offered $180,000,” he said. “Then I got an offer of $210,000.”
DiGirolamo realized he must have something valuable. Two-digit Web names are a limited commodity. For those with a mystical sense, two-digit names also carry a reputation for luck.
DiGirolamo made a promise to himself — he would not sell the 45.com domain for anything less than $250,000.””
Update: NorthJersey.com link no longer valid.
He sold a domain that was worth $2 million for $280K…congrats?
Doc
1st of all I didn’t use the word congrats in the story
2nd of all the $2M dollar valuation is based on which sale?
Good 4 him on a 15k bet.
That’s what Lend.me should propose in March:
Connect borrowers with lenders and use domains/sites as collateral to secure loans:
– Many people who need a loan have electronic asset that could be used as a guarantee.
– Money sleeping in the bank offers low interest.
So there is probably here a way to create a service that should be a win/win situation.
Mr. DiGirolamo is happy with the sale so that’s great.
But too bad he apparently didn’t know about 4.cn, the Chinese domain marketplace which specializes in short, numeric domains.
Who knows what 45.com could have sold for had it been listed there.
You can only get two-character domains in .com, .net & .tv (the rest are ccTLD’s that aren’t widely used).
I think the seller should have held out for at least twice as much as he sold it for.
Just as interestingly we cobrokered the sale of this domain with ename but they decided it was good Business practice to cut us out of the loop re splitting the credit for the sale and more importantly the commission.
@Andy,
A closer doesn’t let himself get “cut out of the loop”. Sounds to me like you dropped the ball.
@Teddyk
I generally don’t make comments when I have no idea what I am talking about. Seems you don’t mind. If you want a back catalog of emails proving we were involved in this sale email me and I’ll send them. We’ve cobrokered many sales with many brokers from Andrew Rosener to Moniker to Eric Rice and none have adopted the methodology of ename.
@Andy,
If you have the requisite documentation (emails), then sue them and stop your crying. Based on what you’re claiming, seems to me that you’d have an iron-clad case against them.
@teddyk
Crying? I’m making our case known as we haven’t made this public over the last couple of months. This case is complicated by the fact that they are based in China. We are following legal avenues and we’ll see what develops.
@Andy,
There’s your first problem – dealing with a Chinese company. They almost all crooked over there; my advice to you is to be more selective with whom you choose to do business. Write this off as a learning experience and move on.
@teddyk
My main reason for making this public is to make other people aware of ename’s modus operandi. Whatever else may come of this at least it is now in the public arena. Why should we not put it out there. This is the first (and clearly last) time we will have dealings with them. And yes we are selective who we deal but any one of us at any stage can get screwed over, I’m sure you have been too. As we all know there are many disreputable entities in this Business, thankfully there are plenty of reputable traders around too.
Lady Luck smiles down on a pool hustler.. great story!
I remember hearing this story last year when the sale was reported at DNJournal. The story of how he got 45.com is better than the actual domain sale.
a biz transaction structered among friends providing collaterial and a biz agreement for non payment.
@ Doc Vegas….. for your info the guy over paid. If you would have bothered to do your homework you would see that 45.com was sold at a historic record high price for a non repeating two digit numeric domain name. The other 3 sales in 2011 consisted of 2 names…11.com and 33.com, those were more valuable to the Chine because they are lucky and repeating… that’s why Chinese investors pay so much. The other one was 46.com which sold for $80K or $90K I forget but it was so minimal to what I got for 45.com I know I got more than $200K more for mine. So I guess 46.com was worth a million….LOL
Bottom line is I did run it through some auctions over the years and believe me when I tell you, $280,000.00 was as many web sites have described….a “staggering” amount. So I don’t know what fantasy land you live in but if you can get $2 million for that name then why didn’t you buy it from me?? LOL
@ Teddy K…. yes it is true Andy was involved and his guy Tony did ask me if he can market my name so I said if you can get me $250K for the name by all means market it. Tony never did bring me that amount as an offer or he would have had a sale. Bottom line is I didn’t agree to let anyone exclusively list my name 45.com because it was a working web site and never for sale. I was merely entertaining offers for many years and the guy who finally stepped up and pulled the trigger on 45.com took it at the fair price for both parties. Personally with the broker fees and escrow fees I think he over paid but anyone who knows anything about numeric domains knows that the minute they are owned by a Chinese investor they double. If I moved to China I wouldn’t have been able to get anymore for that domain. It’s the Chinese who are the ones who have steadily over the past decade acquired these two digit numeric domains because of this reason.
Enames should have gave Tony a percentage for a finders fee or refferel fee or whatever. Thye didn’t do that so shame onthem but they were no obligated to do so…..never the less they should have. They also lied to me and told me that my email address at 45.com would be forwarded for me for 1 year as to not disrupt my transition and they never did that. So it just goes to show you ya can’t trust anyone. But for a quarter of a million dollars I’ll deal with it.
It’s very amusing to see how people who don’t own anything have all this knowledge about everything. And you have to love all the comments about what people have to say after the fact. Where were all these geniuses before I sell domains???
Bottom line is a generic domain and especially a numeric one be it 2 digit 3 digit or 4 digit are only worth what the person is willing to pay for them. Period.
I got lucky and someone paid me a lot of money for a domain name which is reality is worth the $10 it costs to register it.
Glen