gibraltar.com - $360,000 or fake?

[businessdata]

Reserve met, couple of hours to go on sedo and only 1 bid at $360,000.

Should we disbelieve all auction 'sales' when there is only one bid coming in at the top end?

 

[DomainMagnate]

Should we disbelieve all auction 'sales' when there is only one bid coming in at the top end?

That would be my initial idea. Fake, until proven otherwise

Although this one doesn't seem too out of reach

 

[Edwin]

It could be because this is the second time Gibraltar.com has been up for sale in the last couple of weeks and last time there were lots of bids but none met the reserve. The seller could have instructed Sedo to contact the top bidder(s) and tell them the minimum expectations, and then they reopened the sale and only the person willing to hit the (known to them) reserve bid?

 

[scooter]

It could be because this is the second time Gibraltar.com has been up for sale in the last couple of weeks and last time there were lots of bids but none met the reserve. The seller could have instructed Sedo to contact the top bidder(s) and tell them the minimum expectations, and then they reopened the sale and only the person willing to hit the (known to them) reserve bid?

Spot on. The last bid on it was $360,000 (reserve not met)

.

 

[businessdata]

That seems a reasonable explanation. I agree that 360k is probably about right for a domain of this calibre. Poss not a few months ago.

Is it just me looking in the wrong places or have top .com domains rocketed just over the last 3 months or so?

I have been following LLL.coms for instance, the average wholesale price in May of the bottom-barrel ones ie with at least one dodgy (ie z,k,x,v etc) letter and not obviously significant, was around US$4500. This has now risen to around 7-8K. Vast majority aren't being used for sites. A lot of recent publicity about top domainers seems to have brought more speculators into the market (end of off-topic rant).

 

[rob]

It could be because this is the second time Gibraltar.com has been up for sale in the last couple of weeks and last time there were lots of bids but none met the reserve. The seller could have instructed Sedo to contact the top bidder(s) and tell them the minimum expectations, and then they reopened the sale and only the person willing to hit the (known to them) reserve bid?

I would agree with this.

Ultimately keeping an eye on the whois will tell, however there is no reason to think this transaction is any more fake than a $3600 one.

 

[Pred]

my personal feeling is it's not right, although what Edwin says could well be spot on.
Sedo will soon report the sale if it goes through as will dnjournal, so we won't have long to wait