Buys Vanity.com for $340,000 — Jay Westerdal

Domain name was part of a bankruptcy auction.

Domain investor and DomainTools founder Jay Westerdal has purchased the domain names Vanity.com, Vanity.net and the Vanity.com® trademark in a Chapter 11 bankruptcy auction.

The auction was for assets of Vanity Shop of Grand Forks, Inc. and the court has approved the sale.

Westerdal bid $340,000 in a Chapter 11 telephone auction for the domain name. As stated by the auction transcript (pdf), a firm in The Netherlands called Xenax was the initial high bidder at $330,000. Following the creditor committee conferred, Westerdal chimed in saying he was on the other line and wanted to bid again at $340,000. Xenax objected but they accepted Westerdal’s bid anyway.

Vanity.com has some history. The domain was lost in a very bad UDRP decision and then the owner sued to stop the transfer. The firms later settled and the owner transferred the domain name to Vanity Shop.

Westerdal founded DomainTools but later sold the firm. Right now, he operates fresh top level domain names such as .feedback.

Hilco Streambank marketed the bankruptcy assets.