Bankruptcy court approves landmark domain name sale.

Judge Brendan Shannon of the United States Bankruptcy Court District of Delaware has approved Toys ‘R’ Us purchase of the toys.com domain name for $5.1M.

The domain name was auctioned last Friday as a continuation of an auction held the first week of February. In the original auction Faculty Lounge Partners bought the domain for $1.25M. As part of the sale to Toys ‘R’ Us (bidding as Eagle, LLC), Faculty Lounge Partners will pick up a $37,500 break up fee (3% of its stalking horse bid) and legal fee reimbursement.

Interestingly, Toys ‘R’ Us was at the first auction but wouldn’t top the $1.25M Faculty Lounge Partners bid. Instead, the toy company bought certain assets of eToys including eToys.com and customer lists.

The domains were auctioned off after The Parent Company, parent company of eToys, filed for bankruptcy in December. Other domains auctioned off in the initial auction included hobbies.com, birthdays.com, and pinata.com.

© DomainNameWire.com 2009.

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Here come the toys.com sale riders.

After Toys ‘R’ Us bought Toys.com for $5.1 million, I joked that we’d start seeing forum postings for mycrappytoy.com domain names.

“I’m only asking $100,000. Toys.com sold for $5.1M, so this is worth it!”

This week’s stupid press release isn’t actually a press release. It’s an article at ToyNewsMag.com about a toy company that will “consider” selling you its toy domain names:

[Flying Toys] owns the rights to www.flyingtoys.com, www.flyingtoys.co.uk and www.flyingtoys.eu and would consider selling all three if it received a genuine offer, according to Flying Toys boss David Rawlings.

“All these Flying Toys domain names are currently linked to the Flying Toys Ltd website. As we have no plans to discontinue selling ‘Flying Toys’ in the foreseeable future, we would only consider a really serious offer of around £1m.

Indeed, a really serious offer.

“It just seems remarkable that in light of Toys R Us recent purchase, selling a company’s domain name can be more profitable than selling products in the present climate.”

Don’t worry, David. Selling your domain names will not be more profitable than selling your toys. Unless you’re losing money.

© DomainNameWire.com 2009.

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Moniker limits domain submissions to 250 and provides additional guidelines.

Responding to results and criticism of recent live domain name auctions, Moniker is setting a limit to auction submissions to April’s TRAFFIC auction.

Domain owners may submit a maximum of 250 domains to the auction. Frankly, this number is still too high but is a step in the right direction. If they’re truly looking for the best domains, they should try limiting it to 10 or 20 per person.

The company also provided guidelines on which domains are more likely to be accepted for the auction.

One and two word domains, especially:
-A popular commerce and/or seach engine vertical (e.g. travel, debt relief, jobs, music)
-Word(s) or phrase that is easy to remember and spell (e.g. meaningful when spoken together, such as GoForIt.com rather than ForItGo.com)

Low reserve prices:
-Reserves under $1,000 are very likely to end up in the auction catalog (although that could be the silent auction)
-Reserves should not be “asking prices”

Traffic domains:
-Domains with traffic and/or revenue numbers from a reliable source

Domains can be submitted through Moniker’s web site submission form by March 27.

© DomainNameWire.com 2009.

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