This past weekend, George Kirikos shared that he had discovered a seven figure domain name sale that had not ben disclosed before. According to a SEC filing, Better.com was acquired for $1,820,000. George wrote about the domain name sale on his FreeSpeech.com blog. I also added the sale to the Embrace.com list of recent one word .com domain name sales.

On Twitter, George suggested that it would be interesting to see where domain names that were (publicly) sold for one million or more are currently registered.

[1/2] A potential blog post for those with time on their hands (or automated tools). According to @NameBio, there are 136 public transactions of $1 million or more (137 once Better(.)com is added).

Story Idea: Find the current registrar of each “million dollar domain” (cont’d)

— George Kirikos (@GeorgeKirikos) August 7, 2021

I also thought that would be neat to see, and it would be fairly easy to do.

I started by searching NameBio for all public million dollar plus domain name sales and downloaded them into a CSV file. This was easy because I have a paid NameBio account, allowing me to search sales data and download reports like this. I then used the bulk Whois search tool at DomainIQ using my paid account. Among other attributes of the Whois records, I am able to see where each domain name is registered.

Here is the registrar information for the publicly reported million dollar domain name sales found on NameBio:

According to a tweet from Hiren Patel, a domain investor has spent more than $500,000 to purchase a Bored Ape Yacht Club Ape. The golden ape is part of the BAYC NFT series that has become quite popular during the past few months. Several domain investors I know have purchased BAYC apes. Hiren shared the news in a tweet:

Boom Purchased by my very good friend. Super happy for you @Robistraveling .. We been discussing about it since last night. Super happy for you. https://t.co/xYkHp0hoZ8

— XBOT (Hiren Patel) 🍌 🦍 👽🐱 (@QualityNames_) August 5, 2021

Earlier this year, it was announced that Verisign will be increasing the wholesale cost for .com domain name registrations and renewals (this includes domain name transfers). The price increase will be implemented in less than a month on September 1, 2021. Verisign has the contract to operate and manage the registry for .com domain names.

The wholesale cost, paid to Verisign by domain registrars like GoDaddy and Namecheap, will be raised to $8.39/year. The current cost is $7.85/year. The wholesale price does not include the domain registrar’s mark-up, nor does it include the additional $.18 fee charged by ICANN.

No Limit Creatives is a graphic and video design firm that was founded in 2018. The company uses the NLC acronym in its marketing efforts, and it has used the NoLimitCreatives.com domain name for its web presence. In early July, No Limit Creatives acquired NLC.com. Shortly thereafter, it began using NLC.com for its website.

While the price of the domain name will remain private, I can say it was acquired for six figures. The domain name was acquired via GoDaddy. Brian Winegar, a Partner Sales Executive at GoDaddy, was the broker who negotiated the deal to its conclusion.

Jeff Minnichbach, Founder of No Limit Creatives, shared his rationale for the acquisition and upgrade:

Clubhouse has announced that it will be undergoing a rebranding due to brand confusion with the other Clubhouse. The company that operates its website on the Clubhouse.io domain name announced that it will be rebranding as Shortcut. The company appears to have been able to acquire Shortcut.com in advance of the rebranding news (Whois is private, so I can not independently confirm).

Clubhouse announced the news today on Twitter:

Read all about the new name change: https://t.co/PRLnvbkWFK

— Clubhouse (soon to be Shortcut) (@clubhouseio) July 29, 2021

There are moments of pure excitement with the world of domain investing. Winning a competitive auction, receiving a domain name sale payment email from a domain name marketplace, confirming an inbound or outbound domain name transfer, an inquiry or offer from a qualified prospect, and a fruitful negotiation with a tough counterpart. I am sure there are more, but you get the picture.

Beyond these sometimes fleeting moments, there is a great deal of boredom in the domain space. There is only so much time that can be spent seeking out domain names to buy, bidding on domain names, and negotiating sales. A great deal of the day to day domain investment management activity is pretty boring to me.