Gather round

A Domain Campfire Story

Recently I tried to dump a handful of domains that were soon to be dropped, by listing them over at Bido.com, a domain sales venue I hadn’t frequented in quite some time, perhaps a year or more.

I used to make fairly extensive use of their Sales Archive tool to see which domains had sold for what prices, particularly in the ccTLD space.

At the time I was closely monitoring .MX sales, as well as a few other extensions.

It seems the Bido team has since eliminated the ability to see the nicknames of bidders, both during auction as well as in the bid history from archived sales.  The names are now displayed as Bidder 1, Bidder 2, etc.

Perhaps this is as it should be.

Back in the day, I recall a bidder named Gunman who, to an acute observer such as myself, seemed to be buying up every keyword domain under the sun. He was infamous, in the Three Amigos sense of the term.

Or at least, that’s the way I like to remember him.

Draw

I remember when it suddenly dawned on me, digging through sales histories day after day, domain after domain, until one name began surfacing over and over: A lone Gunman, riding through Bido auctions, picking off keyword domains in every TLD imaginable, mostly for $38 (the minimum Bido Price), sometimes mowing down other bidders who were courageous, or careless enough to get in the way.

I’d had it in mind at the time to begin buying up a few keyword domains at bottom dollar prices in off-hand extensions just to feed them over into Bido auctions, like sending one stagecoach after another through an unprotected pass, right into the hands of a wanted bandolero, ready and waiting to take them down.

I never got the chance.  Before I knew it, Gunman had all but Vanished. Perhaps he’d decided to ride south with his hoard of domain names in tow.  I never could tell.

Not more than a month or so later Bido shut down operations, and that was the last I ever heard or seen of Gunman.

Legend has it, if you listen real still, sometimes, you can still hear the sound of old Gunman bidding, late at night.  Listen …

{ 0 comments }