This morning, I saw Collect.com in my DomainTools Domain Monitor email, and it appears to have changed hands. The new registrant of the Collect.com domain name is a company called Cruz Bay Publishing, Inc. On the Collect.com home page, there are several publication logos featured.
I wanted to see if I could learn more about the sale / acquisition of Collect.com, and based on some cursory research, I believe the domain name sold as part of a bankruptcy sale. Here’s more information about the sale from an article published on MediPost in June of this year:
“F+W Media, the publisher of niche service titles that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in March, this week told the court it raised $7.75 million by auctioning off its magazine titles.”
There were reportedly six separate auctions as part of the larger bankruptcy sale. F+W Media was the prior registrant of Collect.com.
A bit further down in the MediaPost article, it mentioned that “Cruz Bay acquired F+W’s collectibles group, which consists of six magazines, for $350,000.” Given the description of the auction lot, it seems to make sense that Collect.com would be a part of this particular group of publications. The other auction lots appear to be unrelated to collectibles, so I don’t see how Collect.com would have fit into those. From what I can see, Cruz Bay also prevailed in other sales as part of this auction, so it is possible that Collect.com was sold in a different auction lot, but this seems unlikely to me.
CoinWorld also published an article about the bankruptcy sale, writing, “Cruz Bay Publishing Inc.’s winning bid for the Collectibles periodicals, comprising six former Krause titles including Numismatic News and Bank Note Reporter, was $350,000.” A look at Archive.org from 2017 shows that Collect.com forwarded to KrauseBooks.com. This is another piece of evidence that would indicate the domain name was part of this $350k auction lot.
Given what I have read, I would be surprised if Collect.com was not a part of that $350,000 deal. From my perspective, that is a fantastic deal for the buyer as Collect.com might be worth that on its own, and the $350,000 sale included multiple properties.
>that is a fantastic deal for the buyer ……the $350,000 sale included multiple properties
Multiple _loss-making_ properties along with their existing liabilities
– but still likely to be a good-deal overall with the domain value
Why do you think it included any liabilities? I thought those would be discharged after the auction and any proceeds from the auction would go towards creditors.
I am not super familiar with bankruptcy auctions though.
At it’s most basic, if you buy a magazine title / brand you’d also get the existing subscribers, which are one of the various liabilities as they are owed money/issues/items/whatever, but you dont get the already-paid subscription fees – there are other costs etc that would also normally be transferred to the new publisher [ or at least be agreed to be paid by the new publisher ]