Reflections on My First Rick Latona/Traffic Auction

I no longer a Rick Latona/Traffic auction virgin anymore.  No,  I wasn’t able to go to the auction in person (I am going next year) but I sat through the entire thing and here is my look at it from the viewpoint of a medium sized domainer (portfolio 50-100K)

1.  There were some really good flips at the auction.  Many of the domains traded hands for much less money in the last year or so.  Impressive given the economy. Rick really does incredible job getting value out of a domain.

2. Very very small crowd.  The camera didn’t show it but a friend was there said the actual bidding crowd in attendance was light but it didn’t seem to slow down the big bids.  No doubt not enough people in crowd to keep the numbers up, thus the high amount of passes (the reserves were pretty high as well)

3. Overall there were some incredible bargains.  In my opinion the real bargains were

SchoolLoans $137,000  That’s less that 5 years revenue.

Golfclubs.com $1.5 million  Peanuts to Nike and Titleist and worth at least million more than this

Kindergarten.com Passed  Revenue already there and can’t believe it didn’t make reserve

Pears.net $900 Only because I specialize in gardening/plant domains and this is a great name for me.  I thought it was a good value

Satisfier.com $700  A condom brand in the making.  Very easy to brand in that niche

Rio.com An easy 200K to be made on a flip with this purchase

4.  Great auctioneer.  I go to auctions almost every month (for various things) and he was great.  Moved things along and kept crowd informed of where the bid was

5.  Rick is bigger than life and that’s the way he likes it.  He’s the modern day Barnum and Bailey, some times I like it, other times it gets to be a bit much and it overshadows the meat of the event.  Great at what he does and I would certainly want him on my team

Looking forward to the extended auction and the results.  I have 5 names but don’t really expect to sell any. I do have a low reserve on 2 of the names just to see if they will draw attention because it will have bids. We’ll see.  Overall a very enjoyable day and it makes me want to try and go free up a hundred grand just to pick up a few names next year