FanBase.com, the expired domain that sold for over $100k…actually did

When FanBase.com broke past the $100k mark on Go Daddy auctions I thought something fishy might be going on. While expired domains do sell for low five-figures all the time, getting into the high five-figure range is rare, and six-figures, well it almost never happens.

While I think FanBase.com is a solid name, I personally don’t think it’s worth six-figures to an end user, and definitely not to an investor that’s trying to buy the name at wholesale. I first read about the sale on Elliot’s blog, DomainInvesting.com and he shared some stats about the auction in his post that I thought I’d share below:

The expiry auction for Fanbase.com ended today at GoDaddy Auctions, and the domain name sold for $151,000. There were 229 bids placed from 29 bidders in the three day expiry auction.

The sale of Fanbase.com is the largest expiry auction at GoDaddy Auctions that I can recall. In looking at NameBio, the next three highest value expiry auctions at GoDaddy in the last 5 years include:

CTX.com – $139,001
DAE.com – $126,000
Gradient.com – $125,001(Source – DomainInvesting.com)

Like I said above, while I think FanBase.com is a solid name, it’s not in the same league as something like Gradient.com that I think makes sense with a six-figure price next to it.

Update – when I originally wrote this post I misread a tweet and thought the winning bidder had not paid. Paul Nicks from Go Daddy corrected me, and this post has been updated to reflect the fact that yes, the bidder paid and FanBase.com did indeed sell for $151,000.

What do you think, in the end is $151k a good price for this name or did the new owner overpay? My two cents is that if it’s an end-user, the price seems high, if it’s a domain investor trying to buy wholesale, then the price is really high.

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton