George Kirikos Uncovers Sale(s) of First.com

It looks like George Kirikos has uncovered the sale (well, sales) of the First.com domain name. He shared the information he found in a Twitter tweet early this afternoon:

The source of George’s information is a SEC filing from Sitestar Corporation, the company that bought and sold First.com. The information was shared in a press release announcing the company’s Q2 2017 results. Here’s an excerpt from the SEC filing:

“Additionally, the subsidiary closed on the sale of First.com, a domain name that has been actively marketed since the first quarter of 2016. The domain name had a cost basis of $200,000 and was sold for net proceeds of $200,000 including broker and commission fees paid.”

It seems that this deal will not be published in DNJournal or NameBio because the most recent exact sale price was not shared. We could probably make a good estimate based on a 15% commission rate, but unless the broker or brokerage shares the actual price, it will probably remain unpublished. My guess is the deal was somewhere in the ballpark of $235,000, which seems like a very reasonable price for a name of this caliber.

Assuming I am reading the report correctly, it looks like the company paid $200,000 to buy First.com back in 2006. If that is correct, this purchase would be tied for 29th largest publicly reported domain name sale of 2006 (tied with Flowers.mobi, Nasty.com, and Farm.com).

Based on my email history, it looks like the domain name was being brokered by Mark Daniel and/or Domain Holdings. I am not sure if Mark or Domain Holdings was the broker of record, but I see the domain name mentioned in several newsletters.

Whois records show the current owner of First.com is based in China. When I visited First.com, I see a website in Chinese with the 66.cn logo on the top left.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

13 COMMENTS

  1. The buyer of FIRST.com is the company behind the website 66.cn, which is (or at least was in 2013) one of Sedo partners.
    Jiang Xiangpu, mentioned in the Whois, is the CEO of 66.cn.
    It would be interesting to know if they purchased it for themselves or on behalf of a client.
    I’d have asked (and got) much more than 200k. 🙂

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