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Rick Schwartz Gets 2021 Domain Sales Season Off to a Great Start with an $850,000 Sale! 

With this being our first domain sales report since just before Christmas, I want to start by wishing you all your best year yet in 2021! As I'm sure you all know, the first week of the new year has been a wild one (and not in a good way) here in the U.S., with the nation's Capitol attacked in a failed coup attempt Wednesday. Tragically, five people died, including a Capitol police office, and it could have been much worse. As was the case during the 9/11 attacks in 2001, Americans couldn't take their eyes off their TVs as events rapidly unfolded. That was certainly true for me and is the reason this report is coming out two days later than usual. There are still some uncertain days immediately ahead of us on the political front, but I am hopeful that the

violence is behind us and we, as a country, can get back to settling our differences peacefully.

 

Fortunately, news from the domain world is much better, especially since Rick Schwartz, the Domain King, informed me on Tuesday that he had just closed an $850,000 sale of GoBet.com. That is the way to get a new year off to a good start! Rick is known as a tough as nails negotiator and he proved that yet again with this deal - one that has been percolating for the past 18 months. The buyer opened with a $70,000 offer and went progressively higher only to repeatedly hear no, no and hell no! from Rick (who also threw in an occasional "Don't waste my time" just to mix things up). Even though Rick was able to hand register the domain back in 1998 for around $50, he stuck to his guns, turning down 100K, 200K, 300K, 400K and even $500,000! How many would do that? On the surface it may look crazy to say no at that level but if Rick had done so he would have left $350,000 on the table! The end result is that an amazing deal was finally reached this week and we are off to the races in 2021!

Rick Schwartz

Since this is our first all extension Top 20 Sales Chart of the new year, it also serves as the current YTD Top20 Chart. If you want to review the final lists of top sales reported in 2020, you can see those on our Year-to-Date Sales Charts page. Starting with our next report January 20, new 2021 YTD Charts will go up on that page and the 2020 Charts will go to our Domain Sales Archive

Speaking of the Archive, our 2018 Top 100 Chart has been amended to reflect another blockbuster sale that was just uncovered by master domain archaeologist George Kirikos. George found an SEC report and corroborating information that showed View.com changed hands that year for $737,000. That gave it the #7 position on the 2018 sales chart. The corporate buyer who previously operated from ViewGlass.com had already raised $650 million before going after the View.com domain, so money was clearly not an object. Thanks again to George for sharing his latest find and adding yet another important piece of information to domain sales history. 

 

 

 

 


        
 
     By Ron Jackson

Now, getting back to sales that have come into us since our last report, Sedo also rang the six-figure bell with a $120,000 sale of Limit.com. A pair of ccTLDs took the next two spots on he leader board with Blue String Ventures selling #3 Surgery.tv for $45,000 and Sedo moving #4 Termine.de ("appointments" in German) for $25,620. Blue String had another nice .tv sale with #9 Soul.tv at $18,000. With Sedo also putting up #18 Mina.co and #19 Payco.in, the country domains wound up claiming five places on the Big Board. 

Everything else went to the .coms, including the $20,000 sale of #6 (tie) Admats.com at Michael Mann's DomainMarket.com, a $15,000 sale of #11 (tie) DocGo.com by XYNames.com, Media Code LLC's $10,000 sale of #16 (tie) GulfTrade.com and DomainTheory.com's $9,500 sale of #19 (tie) RustleUp.com.

The non .com gTLDs were left on the outside looking in with no sales above $8,000 reported this time out. Here's how all of the sales leaders stacked up for the two weeks ending Sunday, January 3, 2021:

The DN Journal Top 20 
Highest Reported Domain Sales - Mon. Dec. 21, 2021 - Sun. Jan. 3, 2021
(Foreign currency to U.S. Dollar Conversions Based on Rates in Effect Jan. 8, 2021)

 

Domain

Sold For

Where Sold

1. GoBetcom $850,000 Rick Schwartz
2. Limit.com $120,000 Sedo
3. Surgery.tv $45,000 Blue String Ventures
4. Termine.de
("appointments" in German)
€21,000 = $25,620 Sedo
5. Frugality.com $22,500 Sedo
6.
tie
Admats.com $20,000 DomainMarket