The domain name, 55588.com which just dropped a few days ago, just sold at DropCatch.com for $91,060.
The domain name was owned by VARTEX Media Marketing GmbH at the German registrar, Vautron Rechenzentrum AG.
VARTEX Media Marketing GmbH owned the domain since at least 2007 according to domaintools.com
The domain had a creation date of 02-17-2000 according to DomainTools.com, before it dropped.
The domain expired on February 17th 2016 and dropped on March 6th and was caught by DropCatch.com.
In all there were 56 bidders that placed a total of 571 bids.
However, two bidders, with the ID’s; “first1” and “jiang123” battled it out for well over one hour, since the domain crossed the $30K mark.
As usual, the previous owner gets none of the proceeds of the auction.
That is a lot of money to walk away from for what would have been a renewal fee of somewhere between $10-$35.
Yes, but as we all know domain auction bidders would rather pay the auction house than ever give the owner a decent offer.
Yeah, why is that, expired domains always get the most bids? I’d be fumming if I dropped that to find it sold at that p
Same with lian.com dropcatch scored $2xx,xxx on that sale, first and his buddies will never buy from private portfolios but they will sit there pushing bids all day.
I don’t get these yahoo’s
Simple. The reasons are distribution, visibility, efficiency, and accessibility.
Distribution: More bidders … more bids … higher prices. You can be sure that 1 bidder alone would pay the minimum at DropCatch or SnapNames or NameJet or Pheenix. If that same buyer writes to the owner directly, he will also try to pay as little as possible. Auction houses bring in more potential buyers than a passive email inbox.
Visibility: A buyer might watch DropCatch regularly but not canvass former owners. Domains get more publicity at high-profile channels.
Efficiency: It’s much easier to approach 1 source with 1000s of domains than it is to approach 1000s of sources with 1 domain each. At an auction platform, no negotiations take up time.
Accessibility: Domains often expire because the owner has left outdated contact information in Whois. So it may be impossible to buy except after expiry. Chinese buyers face an additional language barrier much of the time. Auctions remove that obstacle.
Considering first buys everything, I am sure he can afford a translator, would be interesting to unmask this mystery organization known as first
Definitely. If nobody else breaks that story this year, remind me.
First is not a he, it is a username for a Chinese backordering and bidding service called Juming.com. twotwo is 22.cn, and there are others. Chinese buyers place bids via Juming, and the username First places their bid for them. When first is the highest bidder, they stop placing bids on western marketplaces but their buyers still bid the names higher on their platform. Juming pockets the spread. Check out the sale of sx.com as a notable example.
“Simple. The reasons are distribution, visibility, efficiency, and accessibility.”
All true. Corporate directors, start-ups VC’s can justify the price.
This is old news. “First” is the website KQW.com It merely makes it easier for Chinese speaking people to bid on several sites such as Namejet. First is the account that represents these buyers. Twotwo is the same thing. And the kicker is once they win the name at Namejet the auction continues 2 more days at KQW and often going higher.
There are all kinds of things going on in China, buying groups, influential buyers making certain bulk sales and buys that you’re not going to see in the blogs. One, because most of the blogs just have no interest in covering this, two, most have no clue it is even happening, three if you do know you don’t want to say anything because its great data to buy and sell off of.
Funny, tried buying this name from Vartex several times and NEVER got a reply. The emails never bounced, they got them, very strange…
Yeah right jp
I am right “Nils” in fact my last email to them was many weeks ago. I wonder if whoever their admin is wasn’t around to get the emails or renewal messages, only thing I can think of.
I just checked and my last email to them was Jan 3rd.
I would just like to add that it is apparent you have no idea who I am or you do and are just being a dick.
Weren’t you and Rick bidding on 55588.com as well?
I think first1 is twitter.com/domain . Shawn Lee aka BS.Zhan. I think he was at NamesCon as well.
Well, whoever ends up being the next registrant, who the hell are they going to sell it to for a profit large enough to compensate for the risk?
Exactly. Who would be the end user for this domain at a higher price when identical (even better) options are available at a lower cost?
John
I put in the proxy bid of $10K, in retrospect I guess that wasn’t really bidding.
Rick I have no idea
I saw DomainKing user bids as well, so I thought it might of been Rick. Thought it would be cool if it was him.
Never thought an NNNNN.com would go for $90k, regardless of the numbers. Unless maybe 88888.com
It’s starting to be 2015 all over again. lol
The who is hasn’t changed from dropcatch. Seems like a deadbeat buyer???
I wonder why is the domain back up for auction? It is currently selling for a little over $7,000.
Seriously I’m not surprised. How can someone really pay 90k for such domain?