Gradient.com Ends at $125,001 on GoDaddy Auctions

I was following the Gradient.com auction on GoDaddy Auctions for the last few days, and the domain name sold for $125,001 yesterday. Because Gradient.com was an expired domain name, the domain registrant has several days to renew the domain name before the winning bidder will be able to close on the domain name and take possession of it.

I reached out to GoDaddy Aftermarket VP Paul Nicks about the auction, and he told me “this is the highest priced expired domain on our platform.” If the sale closes, it would rank as the 34th largest public domain name sale of the year in the DNJournal year to date sale report. On NameBio, you can see a list of the largest domain name sales via GoDaddy Auctions and GoDaddy’s domain buy service.

For many years, Gradient.com has been owned by a company called Gradient Resources. It is unclear why the company let the domain name expire. Because this name had significant bidding action for well over a week, I presume representatives from the company have been contacted by many domain investors who tried to privately acquire the domain name. These calls and emails will likely continue until the domain name is renewed or it changes hands. With all of the phone calls and emails, many registrants become alerted to the potential loss of a domain name and renew before the domain name is awarded to the highest bidder.

There are many companies that use Gradient in their branding, so I can see why the domain name would be desired. From my perspective, this seems like an end user price rather than an investor price. If the sale completes, we will know whether this was an investor acquisition or if an end user buyer saw that the domain name expired and made the purchase.

As mentioned at the outset, the domain registrant still has some time to renew the domain name before the auction winner can take possession of it. Unfortunately, GoDaddy does not report finalized domain auction results or sales, so people will need to monitor the Whois record of the domain name to see if the sale closes.

Hopefully GoDaddy will make an exception and provide a final update if / when the sale closes since this is the largest GoDaddy Auctions sale.

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

11 COMMENTS

    • Yet, you still use them on a daily basis like Uniregistry.

      Maybe if you put your words, and actions together then you might have more street cred, but don’t sound off, and then 30 seconds go place bids again.

      Actions speak louder than words!

  1. I actually talked to the person in charge of this name before I bid. They said that due to legal reasons they could not renew, buy or sell the name. Their hands were tied.

  2. As Chris said, due to legal reasons they had to let the domain drop.

    I can understand if 1 end user found this auction and wanted it 125K bad but who is the 2nd highest bidder…? That starts getting interesting. Reminds of the Halvarez days.

  3. Due to legal reasons you have to let the name drop? Can’t sell, renew or even just give the name away? How bizarre! I’d like to know what that legal reason is.

  4. Gradient Resources was a geothermal outfit that couldn’t pay their bills to creditors for their construction of a geothermal site outside of Reno NV. The investment firm that owned Gradient sold off the geothermal site to another company to help pay its creditors, and it is likely that any proceeds from the sale of the Gradient.com domain name would have just gone to pay off those same creditors, so they just let it expire for legal/financial reasons.

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