Brannans Auction – Good Start or Dud?

David and Toby Clements held the first auction for their new domain brokerage and auction house on Brannans.com.

The auction, held using proxibid software, had great potential to rock the domain name market but did not really up to the hype.

It left a lot unsold, and that doesn’t mean one of “the lots” put up for sale.

Out of the 184 domains that were available at the auction, all but 8 ended up unsold with the reserve price unmet. California.com, with a reserve range of $3-4 million, was one of the domains whose reserve price was not met.

Digital.com likewise went a-begging with a reserve range of $1-2 million. Also on the list were Connecticut.com, InstantCash.com and MusicVideos.com, all with a reserve price range of $500k – $1 million. Even Redmond.com didn’t find a buyer for the reserve price range of $50,000 to $100,000.

The eight domains which did find buyers snagged a total of $34,000. The one which got the highest bid was BalletShoes.com, with a reserve price of $5,000-$10,000, which sold at $13,250. The winning bid for BoozeCruise.com was $8,250 (reserve $5,000-$10,000) while hu,net which did not have a reserve price was sold at $6,250.

There are two ways to look at this first auction on Brannans.com. You could appreciate the fact that Brannans managed to put up such high quality domains for sale that buyers didn’t have pockets deep enough to bid for them. This bodes well for the future, as more deep-pocketed buyers and sellers gravitate towards Brannns.

On the other hand, the practical results – $34,000 in auction proceeds, is really on the lower side given all the hype. If it continues like this, the next domain up for auction will be Brannans.com.