Domain Auctions

If you aren’t a fan of the English Premier League, you may not know that Hotspur is the nickname of the EPL football (soccer) team from Tottenham. The team website can be found on TottenhamHotspur.com, possibly because they didn’t have the foresight to register Hotspur.com (or perhaps they didn’t want it – who knows).

I was a bit surprised to see Hotspur.com up for auction on NameJet this week. The auction currently sits at $460 with 68 bidders, and it ends on Monday. Based on a Whois search I did, it appears that Hotspur.com is a true drop rather than a private auction. Hotspur.com has a creation date of March 1998.

Although Hotspur is the nickname of the EPL football club, there are several other clubs and companies using the Hotspur name (see the Wikipedia page for a few). The term is defined as “an impetuous or reckless person; a hothead,” and its origin is the nickname of Sir Henry Percy in the 1400s. I would imagine there are plenty of ways to use the name without running afoul of trademark laws.

All that said, I am wondering what you think the closing price will be. The person who is closest to the final price will get $100 from me via Paypal (doesn’t matter whether they are above or below the final amount). Contest closes on Sunday at 11pm eastern time. One guess per person or you’re disqualified. If there’s a tie, the prize will be split amongst the winners.

The auction for Social.org closed at a price of $228,600 on NameJet this afternoon. Bidding during the final minutes of the auction extended it more than three hours past its scheduled ending time. The winning bidder was “qgpfexzorg,” and there were five active bidders above the $50,000 mark (three above $200,000).

Late last year, Social.com  was sold  for $2,600,000 in a deal co-brokered by Moniker and Marksmen.  Fusible reported  that SalesForce.com acquired Social.com, although I don’t believe the company has publicly confirmed the acquisition.

Last week, I ran a contest on my blog to see who could guess the sale price of the domain name, and the person who guessed the closest would receive a $200 NameJet bidding credit from me. There were guesses that ranged from a low of $8,500 to a high of $1.2 million.

The person who guessed the closest number to the actual sale was Bruce Tedeschi, who guessed a sale price of $230,000, off by $1,400. Congratulations on making the best guess. I will be in touch with you soon to ensure that the bidding credit is delivered to the proper account.

Congratulations to the seller and to NameJet on this successful domain sale. It will be interesting to see who bought the domain name. I am a frequent NameJet bidder, and I did not recognize the winning bidder’s user name, so perhaps it was created specifically for this auction.