I don’t think the results were particularly strong for tonight’s TRAFFIC West auction in Las Vegas, but it resulted in $4.3 million in domain sales. There were some great names up for auction, but in the end, most of them didn’t end up selling.
The silent auction continues for the next few days, and the names that didn’t sell will be available to purchase. The full auction sales list can be found at TheDomains.com.
If I were the owner of most any of those domains I would not have sold that cheap. Way, way, way too cheaply sold – IMO.
Kudos to the buyers, they will look back in a few years and really smile. 🙂
Mike at TheDomains makes a very important point in this regard in his post today; that–given that this big auction was held so close together time wise to DomainFest’s and that many of the domains which sold at DF would have been sold in this one anyway–fairly taken as a whole; the domain resale market is actually humming along quite nicely.
I think there’s somewhat of a disconnect between what domainers consider “premium domains” and what the people who domainers want to sell those domains to think has true value. I think that’s more to do with why domainers get disappointed with these auction results.
***UPDATED BY ELLIOT***
I agree, but my point is that 1 year ago, the sales number probably would have been double (at least) considering the names that were auctioned.
Hey Elliot, I’d love to see you do a comparative study between some auctions from a year ago and those going on now and show some examples of what you’re saying. 🙂
***UPDATED BY ELLIOT***
I wish I had the time 🙂
I think the overall quality of names was better this time and the number of sales were lower. Seems that there were less bidding wars. Of course I could be wrong, but it’s more of a gut feel right now.
Interesting points Elliot. If there are more good domains up for sale, and the same amount of buyers, it would have that effect. Maybe what you’re seeing is that the growth in domaining is out pacing the growth of buyers? The classic supply and demand argument.
“1 year ago, the sales number probably would have been double…”
Perhaps, but a year ago the overall economic outlook was brighter. The domain industry does not exist in a bubble. A decline in corporate profits in particular is going to hit the domain market hard.