Morning Folks!!
A big congrats to Paul Nicks who found something interesting Friday evening that had not been discovered until then and it is pretty big news!!
So, I was posting pictures on Twitter of folks as they registered for the first TRAFFIC 15 years ago in 2004 in which we also held the first domain auction. As you see below, it is on a whiteboard and done by hand.
But look closely behind Joe and, you can actually see the domain names that were in the auction. That is where eagle eye, Paul Nicks of Godaddy discovered Leesa.com on the board which is now a major mattress company online. It was up for auction. Nobody bid on it but somewhere along the history of domains that domain has ROOTS! I am hoping some domain sleuth can dig even deeper and find more!
Paul and Joe are just 2 of the 36 attendees that have already bought their "Early Birdy" tickets. I am not sure at what point I will cut it off. There are 50 tickets at $295 and then the level goes to $395 but at that point, I will have to limit seating and make the last group of seats by invitation only. So just a heads up. It's not unlimited nor do I want it unlimited. Sorry, it can't get too big and still work as I envision and have the most value to those that attend. Someone even suggested having 2 separate meetups, one week apart. That may be a little much but who knows!
Bring yer spouse/GF or both 2 Asheville!
If they attend Cocktail Party, Luncheon or anything w/ food and/or liquor they need to buy a ticket. They are invited to join you on the Ghost Tour or the Beer Brewery tour as those are ala carte tickets. But if they want to be part of the event, it is dutch-treat, they gotta pay too. Sorry. No exceptions.
This is the public list of those attending. Feel free to announce yourself. 5 more signups since the posting. Some very impressive names but not for me to make public without their permission. They are coming from coast to coast and 5 countries.
If you want to join the live conversation, twitter.com/domainking
Rick Schwartz
Bill Hartzer
That’s a great find by Paul. It actually looks like one of those domains on that list is actually not registered right now.
John
Hey Bill, remember our little talk about automated “appraisals”? See my comment below. Remove spaces from the url which I added to avoid the moderation wait.
John
Industry News Alert:
In a big major slap in the face to the entire domain name industry and all domain investors everywhere, Estibot has REDUCED its magical “appraisal” of crypto.com from $48,000 to $31,000 after it sold in July for $12,000,000:
https : // imgur . com/gallery/4INYuNF
Doubtless many noticed the many times I pointed out the $48,000 “appraisal” previously and long after the $12m sale, including Estibot itself, whose rep in the blogs has certainly noticed some of my comments before.
The bizarre reduction is certainly curiouser and curiouser indeed; has anyone ever *not* seen Estibot “fix” their appraisals to reflect the higher price of a sale afterward? I’ve certainly never seen such a strange departure from that. I suppose, however, that perhaps in some twisted fashion they felt doubling down and making it worse was better than doing the “fix” to reflect the sale price, since the latter might tend to greatly compound and highlight the extreme embarrassment of the original $48k figure to begin with.
John
Here’s the live link to the screenshot if Rick is going to allow it to appear:
https://imgur.com/gallery/4INYuNF