Domain Roundtable Auction Preview

Jay Westerdahl and the Domaintools staff has released the preliminary list of 450 domain names scheduled for the Domain Roundtable auction on August 15th, in Seattle, Washington. Judging by the massive amount of comments on the various blog threads written by Jay, I would imagine that they received close to 100,000 domain name submissions from which to choose 450. As I posted in the comments section of the Pick The Winning Domains thread started by Jay, I was baffled at the comments from people who submitted their names. Just based on the sheer amount of comments (and presumably emails, too), Jay and his staff certainly had their hands full.

What were people thinking by submitting hundreds of domain names, when the auction was going to only include 450? If a person can’t pick out their top 10-20 names (maximum), they probably should be investing their money elsewhere. Needless to say, the preliminary list has been released, and here are some of my thoughts:

Great Names – Low Reserves!
Event.com – $165,000
DailyFeeds.com – $3,000
Rehabilitate.com – $25,000
RealityTelevision.com – $1,000
Growers.com – $25,000
(All of my names, but don’t have a need to over-sell them)

Great Names – Reserves Way Too High!
Sucker.com – $70,000 (Cool name, but not for $70k)
Technique.com – $149,000
Magicians.com – $200,000 (Unless David Blaine attends, no magician is paying $200k for this)
Baked.com – $75,000 (If the response to this on Ebay is an indication, it’s priced way too high)
Sculpting.com – $120,000 – (Good name, but I don’t see any artists shelling out big $$ for this one)
Autobiography.com – $179,000 – (Maybe the plural would be of interest to a book seller, but I can’t see the singular going for this price)
LoveStories.com – $100,000 (No side or top advertisers on Google for quoted phrase, Ovt with extension of only 149, and a $100k sales tag? Pass.)

Head Scratchers at Any Price?!
Rejuvinate.com/Rejuvinates.com – (How can you have a TYPO in a live auction?)
AquariumFishes.com – (Since when was “fishes” an acceptable term)
Concho.com – (Names needing a definition as a note shouldn’t be included)
GamesFlix.com – (Less than 50 results on all of Google for this term)
ComplaintsDept.com – (Maybe ComplaintsDepartment.com would be ok…)
CareerAdvise.com – (CareerAdvice.com would be good – CareerAdvise.com, not so much)
SkiSeattle.com – (Since when do people ski in Seattle?)
PizzaHats.com – (What is this?)
HummerRentals.com – (Isn’t selling a TM proof of bad faith?)
DomainsName.com – (This is a case where an extra letter kills all value)
SexualOrgasm.com – (Is there another kind of orgasm with which I am unfamiliar?)
BibleDude.com – (Ummm… no)
20Percent.com – (What’s special about 20%?)
ChinaDaddy.com – (Unless I am missing something, this isn’t good)
SevenSmiles.com – (Hmmm seems like a typo of SevenMile.com – not good)
FullClock.com – (What’s a full clock?)

I don’t see as many huge names as I have seen at TRAFFIC, but most of those seem to end without a sale. There are many decent names at reasonable prices, so I expect to see a good amount of names sell. Making it through 450 names in a live auction is very optimistic though.

While I wish Jay the best success with this auction, I am somewhat concerned that he will not be able to fulfill all sales. Without an agreement signed by the sellers, there is little that will force them to sell should the prices be less than they want, or should they sell elsewhere. I hope this issue is addressed between the time the list is finalized and the day of the auction.