It appears that the Gold.com domain name has been sold sometime in the last week. Gold.com transferred from corporate domain registrar CSC to Uniregistry. The domain name is now registered under Whois privacy proxy and has a “launching soon” landing page. Jamie Zoch was the first person to publicly notice the transfer of Gold.com and speculate that the domain name was sold:
Sterling Jewelers, Inc. (Kay Jewelers) has sold the ultra premium domain name Gold(.)com according to whois records with the domain name transferring into @uniregistry under whois privacy and a new coming soon page. Buyers appear to be in China based on IP. #gold #domain
— Jamie Zoch (@DotWeekly) December 30, 2019
Based on the Whois email address using the @jewels.com domain name, it looks like Gold.com had been owned by Sterling Jewelers, which I believe is a subsidiary of Signet Jewelers. That company owns a number of retail jewelry stores including Kay Jewelers, Jared Galleria, Zales, and a number of other retail businesses. Interestingly, it does not look like the valuable Jewels.com domain name is being used for a website right now.
From what I can see using Archive.org, it looks like Gold.com was being used to forward traffic to the Kay Jewelers website. I looked back several years, and it does not appear that Gold.com had been used as an independent website. In fact, as far back as 2000, Gold.com was used to forward traffic to Kay.com.
Assuming Gold.com was sold, the purchase price is not publicly known. Because Signet Jewelers is publicly traded (SIG on NYSE), the price may be revealed in a future SEC filing. The company has a market cap of over $1B, so my guess is the sale price will not be shared.
If I learn any more about the sale, I will share an update.
I love gold investing. I FINALLY got into domaining just to buy gold domains. I was aware of Kay owning gold.com Gold is just going up from here 🙂 I hope you don’t mind but since it’s the topic here. I have a website, goldchart.org and quite a few domains related to. thegoldpro.com bullionboards.com goldsavvy.com mostly ideally for blogs / forum. I have others too mm minegold.net I hope to turn into a mining pool when / if it’s ever adopted as currency via blockchain, where taxes are taken directly from transactions (I expect). Quite a few more but those are what comes to mind.
GL gold.com!
China back on the scene?
Looks to be north of US$ 3M ..
https://twitter.com/jstenn13/status/1211693005079490560
It looks like Ruby.com was also sold:
https://domaininvesting.com/ruby-com-acquired-by-ruby-receptionists-callruby-com/