Here is what Aron sent to me, which includes the criteria for auction submissions for this particular auction as well as information on how to submit your domain names for entry:
2015 was a great year for Heritage Auctions as a company, the domain industry and the Domain Name and IP Department here at Heritage. Heritage, overall, sold in excess of $830 million in collectibles in 2015. Our client base has grown to over 950,000 affluent collectors and Heritage opened offices in Hong Kong and Amsterdam in 2015. The expansion to Hong Kong will help us reach wealthy investors in that region. The new office also helps us generate quality PR and consignments across Hong Kong and mainland China. The domain department also continued to grow, as we sold several million dollars through live auctions and private client services in the past year.
With that said, it’s time to hold another domain and IP auction. San Francisco is the perfect location, as we have solid relationships with local media and wealthy collectors in the bay area. Our office is located right in the middle of the action, as you can see from the image below. As always, our event will feature a live auctioneer with integrated online bidding. All done in house. We will open online proxy bidding 3 weeks before the live auction. We will PR and market the event heavily. We have great PR relationships; Forbes attended one of our New York auctions and the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg Radio and others have covered this department in the past. As usual, we try to limit the auction to 30-40 names, in total, so we have ample time to market each name effectively. Therefore, we are highly selective on which names make it to our auction.
Submission Criteria
We are seeking:
Short, punchy one word .com names, suitable for branding a company or a new venture.
Curb.com, Luxe.com, Hemisphere.com and Gazelle.com are great examples. .com is ideal. Short is preferred. Generic words, with no suffixes are best. Curbs.com is not ideal. Fencing.com is not ideal. Fence.com would be perfect.
Short acronyms of 2-4 letters.
.com preferred. Examples are NL.com, ACM.com, BOHO.com and GHG.com. We do not have buyers for letter/number combinations like H5K.com or 77F.com. Those are not ideal.
Other two word or geo names.
In the past we have sold two word names and geographic .coms. Names like ThinkBig.com and Charlotte.com might be ideal for this auction, if priced well.
Names that match other categories at HA.com.
Names that might be suitable for an affluent buyer in art, sports memorabilia, coins or comics may be a good fit. We cross promote these names to the big buyers in those categories. However, in the past, the overly expensive names haven’t moved ($100,000 and up). Try to keep it to $20,000 and under. Give these buyers a no-brainer decision. Visit www.HA.com to see our categories.
Remember who the target audience is. We will market the auction to our 950,000 client members, investors, VC’s and through traditional media. Send over names that are perfect for investment or branding. If it has value, and you want to move it, reach out to me. We will try to give your name(s) the most exposure possible.
Please send your names with your minimum reserve prices (if any). Since space is limited, we are looking for great names, priced well. This is a great chance to put your names in front of a large audience. Our sweet spot on prices is $50,000 – $300,000 for one word .com names, as you can see from past sales listed on www.HA.com/IP Everything can’t be a six-figure sale, so go ahead and send names valued under $50,000 if they are ideal for our buyers. Generic words and short .com names are what we’ve sold recently both publicly and privately.
