Operate.com was sold today for $190,000 in a public auction on NameJet. It looks like there were more than 100 bidders who participated in the auction with at least a backorder. Operate.com was one of the Thought Convergence domain names put into auction at NameJet.
According to NameBio, this is the largest sale on the NameJet platform in at least three years. The $148,134 sale of eShop.com in March of this year was the previous high water mark at NameJet during the past three years.
I received an email from NameJet announcing a special auction that is filled with exceptional, privately owned domain names. The NameJet website also has banners on-site announcing the auction. These domain names are owned by Thought Convergence, a company co-founded by Ammar Kubba and Kevin Vo.
Some of the domain names that are included in the auction are:
For the last couple of weeks give or take, I have been unable to visit current auctions and closed auctions by clicking NameJet email links on my Chrome browser. When I click one of the auction links in an Auction Start or Outbid Notice email, here’s what the page looks like to me:
Late last week, I received an email from NameJet with the subject “NameJet ACTION REQUIRED: Unable to process domain order.” I’ve received these emails on rare occasions in the past, and typically the payment goes through the next day or before. In this instance, I won more than one auction, and I received several of these emails.
Since none of my payment information has changed, I spent some time on the phone with my bank yesterday. I was assured that no payments had been declined or rejected, and in fact, they did not see any payment attempts from NameJet.
Last night, I received quite a few emails from NameJet. This is not uncommon when domain names I have backordered are about to hit the auction block. What was unique about these emails are that they advertised domain names that were available to purchase on NameJet without going through the auction process. Instead, NameJet is now offering domain names for purchase with a buy it now price.
Here’s an excerpt from one of the many emails I received with some details redacted:
The Alliance of American Football (AAF) was a professional football league that played part of a football season in 2019. According to Sports Illustrated, AAF filed for bankruptcy in 2019. The league used the valuable AAF.com domain name for its website while it was operational and for sometime after its bankruptcy. Whois records now show that AAF.com expired, and the domain name is now in pending delete status.
Here’s a screenshot of the current Whois record, courtesy of DomainTools:
