After YP.com (picked up by Yellow Pages for $3.85 million) Fly.com (bought by Travelzoo for $1.8 million), Vibrators.com ($1 million), here’s another high-profile domain name that was just acquired for a 7-figure sum: Faculty Lounge has put $1.25 million on the table for Toys.com in an auction organized as a result of the recent meltdown of The Parent Company.
The Parent Company filed for bankruptcy in December 2008 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court District of Delaware, and has auctioned off several substantial assets at the law offices of Pachulski Stang Ziehl & Jones LLP yesterday morning. Although creditors still need to approve everything, most of the assets on auction were sold, and you couldn’t tell we’re in a recession if you look at the sums that were coughed up.
ePregnancy.com and other eToys assets were bought for $2.15 million (they were actual operational businesses, not just domain names), while Birthdays.com, Pinata.com, eParties.com were acquired for $200,000 by Done Ventures and Domain Equity picked up Hobbies.com and iToys.com for $102,000.
But Toys.com was the most noteworthy sale, as it was worth $1.25 million to Faculty Lounge solely for the domain name.
(Source: Domain Name Wire)
god bless America. Gotta love it.
they could/should have got more
These days?
I agree, 1.25 million is a very cheap for that domain name.
A lot of e-commerce big boys are doing well enough to afford this gem.
The auction was largely unadvertised so I agree they could have gotten more if more buyers had known about it.
Interesting to see some of the parties who bid — Amazon, Toys R Us, Drugstore.com etc.
Domain Name Wire says creditors can change their mind if someone comes with a higher offer
Robb, I didn’t mean to suggest they were soliciting higher offers or would reconsider. But they do have to approve it (as does the bankruptcy judge, apparently). I’d be surprised if they backed out on any of the deals unless they disagreed on some legal aspects.
Those are some very good deals, domain names are always a good commodity to hold on to whether you intend to develop or not.
Toys.com @ $1.25 Mil was the best deal in this auction.
it was a distressed sale. Domains have lost a ton of value because there’s no vc money and any/all business models are in question even with a great domain. Many retail concepts are completely played out and the google adsense tricks are a thing of the past.
What does VC money have to do with value of domains?
I agree with you that retail concepts are played out but there are still gems out there to be discovered.
Woot / Etsy did great and found right market rather quickly in already packed ‘retail’ space.
1.25 million a sign of distress? good single term and keyphrase domains will continue to appreciate. reason? there’s only a handful of them. less than 1% or the aprox 100 million domains registered are premium top level and able to bring in values in excess of 5 figures. kinda like needles in haystacks becoming more scarce every day. own a master collection of strategic top level natural language properties and you just might be on to something.
NaturalLocator.com – got niche?
lol
Stop spamming.
ask me why I spend all my spare income buying all 1000 combination of xxxLocator.com domain names . . . its because I believe in the premiumness of the word locator and its ability to replace search as the main paradigm for LOCATING content in the 4th dimension.
AssLocator.com – Got Tracks?
as you can see i have a strong following.
just wish they would share links not lips.
No chance.
Toys.com for $1.25 million?
That is a ridiculous bargain. You could make that back over 1 Holiday season just in referral fees. If Domain Name Wire says creditors can accept a higher bid, there’s no way the final clearing price is going to be $1.25.
Domain names are like land. There’s a finite quantity. The ongoing cost to maintain the domain is negligible. And you get a guaranteed stream of traffic regardless of your effort. I recently paid 6-figures for MunicipalBonds.com, which is good, but Toys.com is a mega domain.
bhu – see my comment above. I didn’t mean to construe that they would back out from a higher bid. Just that the creditors have to approve the deal.
I agree, Toys.com is an EXCELLENT EXCELLENT domain name. Bad economy or not, it was quite a bargain to get this great domain at $1.25 mil.
BTW, I justed checked out Fly.com and that website sucks peanuts.
It was a good price and in my opinion in the top 100 ‘best domains to own’ in terms of revenue potential. Does the economic crisis mean that parents are going to stop buying presents for their kids on birthdays and at Christmas?
Generic product-service search term domains are excellent investments!
who wants this gem
famous.tv
think.tv
Let’s make a deal! lol
I registered trillionth.net yesterday if we’re turning this into a sales thread.
Seriously though, I think whilst the likes of Fly.com and Toy.com are good investments, the challenge of turning them into successful businesses is not as easy as it looks.
You will know it was a good deal the day you sell or break even on the business
I’m guessing Toys.com gets 1500-2000 daily type-ins. Perhaps even more. After the initial investment, you are left with a lifetime of thousands of targeted daily leads. With mere average business skills, it wouldn’t take much for an individual to recoup the original investment.
Google loves generic .com domains, resulting in extremely high SE rankings, and even more traffic. This is an incredible investment, and well under it’s true value in my opinion.
From what I see they get around 1,000,000 uniqs/month.
eToys.com yes, but not Toys.com.
http://www.quan...st.com/toys.com
http://siteanal....com/?metric=uv
I know it’s bullshit but that’s still some serious traffic. Being #3 for ‘toys’ in Google is a factor too.
Perhaps 500,000K uniqs?
Anybody wants to buy g00gle.com…? I’ll let you have it for a buck and a coke…
looks like Done Ventures got the best deal
My personal take is the hobbies.com/itoys.com lot got the best deal, followed by the pinata.com lot.
The winner of eToys, ePregnancy et al also got a big customer list from what I understand.
I wish someone bought my site for $ 100mill. Lol. I think it’s getting hard to make money in this economy.
Seems to be a strong consensus here that Toys.com is an incredible premium domain name. And that it could have sold for considerably more.
Children’s toys is the obvious first use. But might be the owner intends to sell cars, boats, and planes – high end “toys” for the jet set. Toys.com would be an excellent domain choice for this use.
Bad economy or not, Toys.com is a great deal at this price.
toys.com is a great domain name, cant argue with that.
Toy domain for $1.25mm…Wow.
Extremely undervalued.
Studies have shown tween spending to be recession proof. Years from now this will go down as a fantastic investment.
printing.net
signs.net
labels.net
inquiries: itadmin@scottcraft.com
One problem with Toys.com is that if eToys.com could not make money selling toys online, I am not sure any new startup could do so, even while paying a relatively low price for the domain. I would really need to know how much type-in traffic it has to make a guess at how much it is worth. But, it also seems like a no-brainer for some big toy company (like Mattel) to buy it.
Site eventually got bought for $5M.
This just happened. Old story. New news.
http://www.prwe...rweb2329494.htm