A few days ago we wrote about and compared the price and increase in value of Taxi Medallions to domain names.
Today I read a story about another commodity-collectable that sold originally for just a few dollars that fetched over $3,500,000 at auction.
Foxnews.com tells the story about a recent auction of Comic Books selling for a total of $3.5 Million dollars.
Needless to say the original price of these comic books were under $10.
“A 1939 copy of Detective Comics No. 27 that features the debut of Batman got the top bid at the New York City auction Wednesday.”
“It sold for about $523,000”
“The bulk of a man’s childhood comic book collection that included many of the most prized issues ever published has sold for about $3.5 million.”
“Action Comics No. 1, a 1938 issue featuring the first appearance of Superman, sold for about $299,000.”
“Batman No. 1 from 1940 sold for about $275,000.”
The comic books were sold by relatives of the original buyer how died in 1994.
“Relatives found the 345 well-preserved comics he bought as a child while cleaning out his wife’s Virginia home following her death last February.”
Something rare will increase in value.
If you believe like we do that domain names are going to be needed in a world that is more Internet based everyday, there value will continue to rise as well.
Unfortunately most families won’t ever stumble on a pile of “domains” in the garage. This speaks to the need for estate planning.
Death is actually an opportunist’s wet dream – see how Limit.com was stolen as an example.
Luckily most of us own “great” names like:
-SamedayMarketing.com
-Forensic3d.com
All my death will do is save my family some needless renewal fees. But yes, rarity does bring home the most coin… it’s why street hookers make less than the Spritzer play-girls.
Anyone else remember the late 80’s, early 90’s?
“Baseball card shop” or a card/comic/coin hybrid combo in every strip mall?
That market collapsed under its own weight and the advent of ebay was the headshot, but here 20 years later, you can still find a strong market for that 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle, people are still paying hundreds of thousands for the first appearance of Superman.
The stuff that always was quality, remains quality.
Everything else is bullshit.
(huge domain parallel)
Swear to god, growing up in baseball card/comic book mania was singularly the BEST lesson I ever learned on life; watching every kid in America strutting around with their black covered “Death Of Superman” issue, proudly boasting of how they paid a few bucks yet it’s “worth $50” 24 hours later, yet there wasn’t a single buyer for them since everyone already had 20.
Lessons learned, lessons learned, weird to see how many times that same delusion pops up again and again, in other things.
Thanks for the article, MHB. My asking prices just doubled…f’-’em.
The comics doesn’t comes with renewal fees, and registrars that will auction your precious domains if not renew. Though I like the idea of comparison for casual conversation with people who doesn’t know domains.
Cheers,
EM @ KING.NET
Em
Comic books also don’t generate any money while your holding them
Great “series” of articles comparing the Real True Value of good domain names to things where values have been established and accepted!
When compared to almost all forms of advertising, the value of good domains really shines.
When compared to the costs of advertising and marketing, the only way anyone with any business savvy could not see their value would be because they don’t Want to see it.
Hopefully, some of these Domain Values compared to other values articles may find their way into the mass media and begin to educate some of the right people.
I just read about this last night, it is a good parallel to domains in some ways. I can’t believe that guy had all those classic issues from the 30’s, what a collection.
I had 3 grocery bags of baseball cards circa 1959-1966 that my mother made me give away when we moved back then. Those cards would have been worth hundreds of thousands of dollars at the peak. In New York, we used to “Flip” baseball cards. We played “Leaners” where you would lean up a set of 7 cards or so against the wall and whoever would flip the most cards off the wall by skimming another baseball card from about 10ft away would win all the cards it took to do that. Sometimes several hundred cards were at stake at one time.
But baseball cards, comic books, coin and stamp collecting along with the other parallels helps to explain domains. But look at all the facets and comparisons we can make. And the taxi cab medallions yesterday. Oil wells, mineral rights, real estate, collectibles, assets, diamonds, yellow pages, billboards, store fronts. The list is so long and wide and unique, that no other item in HISTORY has had more meaning, power and money making ability than a great domain name. A meaningful name.
What we know like the back of our hand is being discovered by the masses. In just a very short amount of time it will be the single most sought after “Thing” in all of history.
I love the superman comics, but no intension of collecting, and have no place to store them. I just enjoy reading the stories and the arts, maybe someday.
Cheers.
To keep the analogy going though:
The people paying money for these items are “collectors” and are collecting one-offs and are paying for the ultra rare. Young kids can still collect early editions of Sandman or the Crow and be quite happy.
Old baseball cards of real value came with cigarettes or other candy. When in the 90s you could buy the Topps COMPLETE set there was no rarity left. The industry collapsed. The rare ones are still rare – nothing changed.
In domaining the real rare names are the ones that can serve as brandable/memorable/keywordable. These are gone and you’re relying on collectors or big business – but the pool is smaller. More people want a Willie Mays rookie card than want a domain name like book.com (outside of investors)… the collectors.
A small business, like the Gaiman crows, can function quite well on two/three word .com if it’s memorable and meaningful. This is the area that most people are looking at. Do you think the supply of real two word .coms is so finite that a SMB couldn’t find something that works under $5K?
Note. I said “that works” because what a business needs is not the same as what a domainer wants them to need. Now the value of decent names WILL continue to rise – but the question is whether they will rise far above rate of inflation and in the face of competition from multiple new marketing avenues.
BUT:
The internet is a platform. The domain name is an access to that platform; however, there will many many new iterations of architecture and infrastructure coming over the next few years. A rare comic book will always be a physical commodity of collectable value even as the genre went from b&w to color to moving, and from paper to kindle, to streaming. A domain name will never be a physical commodity – it needs the underpinnings of the platform. You can’t hang a domain name next to a Klimt at MOMA. You can’t have your friends come over and look at your Beatles butchered baby cover. Maybe you could show them your “archive.org” 2011 screenshot with all of it’s ads.
I’m so with anon about baseball cards and comic books.
The baseball card industry fell apart because as soon as it got popular the card companies started producing more cards, glossy cards, sparkly cards, gold edition, you name it, until basebal cards were just stupid, but yes, the good cards from the 50’s held their value.
Take a Beckett baseball card price guide. It starts on page 1 with baseball cards from the 1920’s, and gets to 1990 on about page 10 maybe. Then from 1990 to 1995 is maybe 100 pages to account for all the crap that was produced. I haven’t seen a Beckett since 1995 but it must be the size of an unabridged dictionary by now yet the value of the cards on the first 10 pages is worth more than the next 10000 pages.
If you don’t see the parallel with this to the new tlds then look again.
The big question then is what page of the Domain name Beckett are we on now? Page 10, or is it too late for us, are we already on page 11+. I’m sure however that the tlds are going to be way in the high numbered pages.
And @anon, I still have my superman and batman death/back to life again series. I sold all my comics 10 years ago except those. Maybe they are worth $50 a shot now?
I was having a discussion with someone recently about how domains really are (if they are intelligently acquired and held) a great way to not only produce a healthy ROI from an initial investment but hedge against any economic scenario.
There’s also a massive advantage in being able to operate the business with basically a laptop and internet connection from anywhere in the world. And again provided that the domains were purchased wisely (aka not overpaying) the market is fairly fluid so moving out of one domain and not having your head handed to you shouldn’t prove too difficult. Although I’ve been trying to sell off via brokers OrlandoFlights.com for six months now. So even when a domain is purchased well it can prove difficult.
The only thing that is really scary about domains as an investment vehicle is UDRP. Because anything can go up or down in value, but only domains can be taken away from the owner sometimes unjustly.
The costs associated with doing so are relatively low as well and ironically there seem to be too few cases where damages are awarded for reverse domain hijacking attempts.
If you own some insane typo/TM domain (Yahooo.com for example) well it should be taken away.
But with true generics and the CVC, CVV acronym domains it never should. As we all know too well that happens way too often.
As a long term investment, domains pretty much outstrip any alternative vertical by a long shot.
No other industry offers the kind of ROI that can be achieved by domains – 1000% within a few years is more the norm than the aberration, try getting your stockbroker to match that.
Some brilliant observations in the comments:
“The stuff that always was quality, remains quality.
Everything else is bullshit.
(huge domain parallel) ”
Anon
“…no other item in HISTORY has had more meaning, power and money making ability than a great domain name. A meaningful name.”
Rick Schwartz
I like the idea of comparing domains to old comic books. Many years from now, we’ll look back at today’s domain prices as cheap, just as we look back and yesteryears domain prices as cheap today. Then again… the price of everything goes up over time with inflation 🙁
Regardless, with a solid domain and following best practices for web development a good domain name can be a profitable long term investment as many domainers can attest too. We acquired onlinecasino.co last year, and the seller made a nice profit. That’s because they had a nice domain about online casino gambling. If it was billscasinogambling.co it would not have carried the same value however. So, not all domains are created equal. Then again… neither are all comic books 😉