Dials Up Great Deal at $250,000 — 800.com Buyer

800.com goes for $250,000 since no one knows regarding the auction.

You might call it Toy Story, part 2. It goes like this: domain sells at bankruptcy auction, few people know regarding the auction, more buyers emerge following news of auction gets out, potential buyers challenge sale in court, auction is repeated.

That’s what happened with Toys.com, which ended up selling for regarding 4 times the initial “winning bid”.

And it almost happened with 800.com, which was sold in a Circuit City auction. The winning bidder picked it up for a song, at only $250,000.

Here’s the setup. The auction for 800.com is planned, but no one reaches out to the domain community to let them know. Therefore, only a few bidders participate. One is Loren Stocker, who filed a claim with the court that he had a first right of refusal agreement with Circuit City. Another is Bill Quimby of TollFreeNumbers.com, who claims he’s “bidding seriously”, although he couldn’t muster up much more than a couple hundred thousand dollars.

Then there was QuamTel, which ended up winning the bidding with an opening bid of $250,000.

Then news gets out and real serious bidders come out of the woodwork. In this case, another firm petitioned the court to throw out the sale and offered $500,000 for the domain.

But unlike with Toys.com, the court denied the request.

So QuamTel walks away with a sweet deal on a killer domain. And it’s putting it to good use.