ROTD Live Auction: Domain Names Now Open for Bidding

As I shared a couple of week ago, Right of the Dot (ROTD) is hosting a live domain name auction with well-known auctioneer Wayne Wheat at the helm. The live portion of the auction will be held on February 25, 2021 at 12:00 PM CST. Bidding will be hosted on the HiBid auction platform.

According to a LinkedIn post by ROTD founder Monte Cahn, the domain names in the auction are now listed on the HiBid platform, and bidding has opened:

There are some exceptional domain names listed for sale in the auction. For instance, a handful of the domain names that stand out to me include:

  • Jeweler.com
  • Automobile.com
  • Broncos.com
  • Indulgence.com
  • Emily.com

One thing I noticed is that reserve prices are not listed. You can tell if a domain name has a reserve price, but the reserve ranges are not listed. I asked Monte about this, and he told me he is not sure the reserves will be posted. As a prospective bidder, I hope reserves are added because I don’t want to waste my time waiting for an auction, bidding what I believe to be a reasonable amount, only to learn I was not even close to the reserve (assuming Monte calls after the auction to try and close a deal).

Notably, the auctions will have a 1.5% Buyers Premium on all sales. While a buyers premium is very common for other types of auctions, I don’t recall seeing one on a domain name auction in several years. I think it is a good idea that this was kept at a minimal number so there are no surprises at closing.

If you are interested in bidding on any of these auctions and have not participated in an auction on the HiBid platform, you should take some time to register and understand how the platform works.

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

17 COMMENTS

  1. “he told me he is not sure the reserves will be posted.” He does not want the reserves to be posted because ……
    For example Broncos.com ….reserve is $100K
    Say you bid $110K, you overpaid $10K
    You bid $90K and he can go back to you to make an offer.

    Reserve is a dirty way for the house to make more money since we don’t know what the reserve$$$ is.
    Why not just put at “Buy Now”?

    The dirty tricks of Auctioning!

  2. Bulls – thats actually not the case and we will be posting bidding guidance based on reserve pricing shortly. We do not interfere with the integrity of any auctions in any way. RightOfTheDot, LLC is probably the only company in our industry with a professional Auction Business license and we follow the law and guidelines established for our industry and license.

    In any case, we look forward to a great event to help everyone in the domain and digital real-estate industry!

  3. What is the F purpose of having Reserve and it is hidden? besides it serves the house’s favors.
    Like Ebay, it is either you bid or BUY NOW at this price.

  4. Bulls – do you know anything about auction theory and how auctions work or are you just throwing statements out without thinking? Have you ever heard of Sothebys, Christies, Mecum, Barrett Jacksons?? do they show the reserves or hide them? how successful are they for both buyers and sellers? Buy Now pricing IS NOT AN AUCTION! LOL

  5. Many many moons ago,my family was in the auction business.
    Every number should be out on display like the restaurant menu board.
    A plate of kung pau chicken is displayed.
    A bowl of hot pho with the calorie counts is out there on the board for everyone to see.
    Numbers should be transparent.
    Medical costs should be displayed like the cost of a box of condom

    Hidden reserves is just bidding against oneself and the only winner is the house.

    Time for change..time for full transparency anywhere anytime any place in business.

  6. If you want the domain to be sold at 100K, then starts the bidding at 100K.
    Why start at 20$ ,it is a time waster and removes those low ballers.

    It is not a crime to make as much money as you can but at least have the courtesy to show the numbers.

    When I sell domains like 4l I got at $15 from those who called themselves domain experts 7 yrs ago and I sold for $$$$$, at least I told them that how much I paid for—yea -courtesy to tell them how much I paid and how much money I am going to profit, there is nothing to hide.
    Squarely.com I bought at $500 and I am going to sell for $$$$$$—nothing to hide!!

  7. It is a culture in this country USA that it is a taboo to talk about money, how much is your salary$, how much you make, how much you pay for…that why the kids are not taught about financial management and people are in debts. They are fear of money and fear of just talking about money.

    Salary should be opened too to eliminate salary discrepancies between the sexes.

  8. I bought my house at 110K in 1992 and now it is worth 1.3million $$$ and if someone offers to buy it at 2million$$$ which I know I can get it in 2024,so why should I hide the numbers… of course I want to make money as much as I can. Just like selling domains, just list the damn price you want!!! Show the numbers!!

    FYI- anyone can check how much you bought the house in the city database-it is public record.

    The more you are transparent with money, the more people don’t give a shit about it! .
    The more you hide the money, the more people want to find out…..show us the tax returns…Mr. Impeached Trumpy!!

  9. Can someone please moderate these comments, this chap ‘BullS’ is obviously aware by his pseudonym of the lack of quality of what he posts.

    • I couldn’t agree more with BullS. I’ve seen ROTD/Monte’s auction and feel they are a complete scheme. He goes through all possible tricks to try to make bidders pay more for a domain. Yes, it’s an auction but the more there is transparency then the easier it is for domain buyers to make the right decisions.
      Monte might have been in the business for…. 30 years, but that doesn’t mean he does this right.

      Aside from the way in which he runs the auction, last time I was in a live auction, my girlfriend was with me. She wanted to walk out because of the derogatory comment he made in public and couldn’t believe the lack of professionalism with the table full of empty drink glasses. There were probably 6-8 whiskey glass. Not water…

      Not the image we want in the industry

  10. Any finalized sales list for this auction?

    Over 600 high-value domains auctioned off and apparently no official results have been released.

    Almost six weeks since the first auction, and in some cases winning bidders are still waiting to receive the domains they paid for.

    Can you follow up on this with some more information?

  11. Hello Freddie, We have a lot of good sales from the auctions logged but not reported yet as we are still pushing through it all. We had a big buyer who won multiple names in the live and online auctions who was hospitalized for Covid right after the extended auction. Fortunately he was released yesterday and is now home recovering. They are sending payment for a bunch of domains very soon. That was a bit scary for him.

    we also completed the sale of names.com for $300k and will report that one shortly as well as some others sold in the after auction. We resold Tattoo.com for over $800,000 and about to close on Greece.com as well as several others. Many of the sales were batched from the live and extended auction as its more efficient to do single payments and send auth codes or transfers in batches rather than each name as it sells if there are multiple buyers and sellers for the names involved. So its been 12 days since the auctions ended, not 6 weeks as we start this process after the extended auction ends which was March 12.

    More to come!

  12. Those are a few high profile sales. Congratulations.

    Out of the 600+ domains in the auctions, can you announce how many domains sold (and/or met reserve)?

    And what percentage of the first batch of sales from the February 25th auction (5 weeks ago) and from the second batch from the March 12th auction (3 weeks ago) are completed. That is, the buyer has paid in full and the domain name has been delivered to the buyer.

    Thanks in advance. Nice work.

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