As a standout In the late 90's internet boom, Pointcast offered an innovative toolbar that let you check on the latest news, sports, weather, stock quotes and other constantly updated information with one click. You could also customize content with local newspapers, entertainment gossip or anything else you could imagine. It was one of my favorite applications at the time and the future for the company seemed bright indeed. 

Unfortunately, Pointcast never able to sufficiently monetize their program and wound up being among the victims when the internet bubble burst. The final chapter for Pointcast was written last week when the domain name was sold at Pool.com. Despite it's former popularity, Pointcast.com's Overture number has dwindled to 170. The buyer may not see enormous amounts of residual traffic, but in my mind at least, Pointcast.com remains a very prestigious domain name. 

It seems we have been able to report "firsts" for our domain charts every week and this week is no different. For the first time .ORG and .BIZ make appearances on the Top Ten list. ChatRooms.org changed hands for $4,200 at DomainSystems.com to take the #7 position and Dick.biz was right behind after going for $4,156 at Sedo. 

Germany's .DE has been competing on a fairly equal footing with .COM in recent weeks (they are the world's top two extensions in number of registrations), but .COM was dominant this week, taking 6 of the top 10 spots while .DE was limited to one.

As always, keep in mind that these are the highest value sales that have been reported in the past week. This column is meant to be an educational tool, not a complete list documenting ALL high value domain sales. Such a list is impossible to produce because many sales are kept private at the insistence of buyers, sellers or both. So without further ado, here are this week's big winners:

DomainSystems.com enjoyed an especially strong week. In addition to their four entries in the Top Ten, they sold AtlanticCityDirect.com for $3,400. CEO Monte Cahn tells us the five sales they were able to report  weren't even their best five (confidentiality requests from buyers or sellers prevented the release of others).

As always Sedo's sales represented a broad range of extensions. Along with the .DE and .BIZ they placed on the main chart, Sedo had four figure sales with .COM, .INFO and .US (see the New TLD Top 5 Chart below for more on the .INFO and .US sales). They rang up $2,880 for Euroworks.com, $2,731 for 123Trouve.com (means 123Found in French), $1,782 for Vele.com and $1,545 for ChristmasGift.com (perhaps it's just because the Season is approaching, but that looks like a steal to me!). Sedo's many .DE sales also included Xchange.de for $1,900 and Say.de for $1,188.

Afternic.com presented buyers with what look to us to be some excellent values this past week. Someone took home VIS.com for $3,255 and Pacesetters.com went for $1,100. Afternic also sold SouthChannel.com for $1,355 and had a four-figure .ORG sale with Cyberbeggar.org going for $1,000.

In addition to our Top Ten list we keep track of new extension sales (.info, .biz and .us) with a separate New TLD Top Five chart each week. We see some real diversity on the new extension list this week with all three TLD's represented (all going through the same venue however - congratulations to Sedo on that feat). Every domain on the chart also went for four figures indicating that end user buyers are continuing to discover the new kids on the block. Here is the full list.

It will be interesting to see how the new extensions develop in the years ahead. Should they gain even a small portion of the market commanded by the older extensions, these prices for terms like DVD and Safes will look like phenomenal bargains in hindsight.

In some other sales of note, Afternic reported IAC.us went for $500. The Canadian counterpart to .US - .CA also had a $500 sale at Afternic with Amplifier.ca fetching that amount.

As always, we welcome all verifiable sales reports from companies, private sellers or individuals with knowledge of an important sale made through any channel. To contribute information and help make this column better,  just drop a note to [email protected].

Every Tuesday we publish the highest reported domain name sales for the previous week. On Monday our contributors send us their sales data for the previous 7 days. We then compile that information and write this report for Tuesday publication to give you the freshest sales report in the industry. 

We will close with this standard caution. These are not average selling prices - these are top selling domains. One of the biggest impediments to making sales is pricing domains at unrealistic levels. For most of us, pricing domains at the levels achieved on the Top Ten chart will leave us waiting a long time to make a sale! We hope you will use the information presented here as a measuring stick that will help you price your domains at levels that will put more money in your pocket more often!

Editor's Note: If you wish to review previous Domain Sales columns, they are available in our Archive.