The high bidder’s ID was Maxbid.

In all there were 174 bidders in the auction with 7 bidding $5K or more.

The domain name ePhoto.com was a pure drop domain, meaning it didn’t drop to a certain service, and could have been caught by anyone.

According to DomainTools appears to have been last owned by Verisign and registered at melbourneit.com.

Whether Verisign actually owned the domain or took possession of it years ago on an earlier drop, and why they would simply allow it to drop again is anyone’s guess.

According to Screenshots.com the domain has been parked for a number of years.

Here is the old whois record:

Domain Name.......... ephoto.com
  Creation Date........ 1995-10-18
  Registration Date.... 2009-09-27
  Expiry Date.......... 2011-11-19
  Organisation Name.... Verisign Inc.
  Organisation Address. 21355 Ridgetop Circle
  Organisation Address.
  Organisation Address. Dulles
  Organisation Address. 20166
  Organisation Address. VA
  Organisation Address. UNITED STATES

Admin Name........... Verisign Hostmaster
  Admin Address........ Verisign, Inc.
  Admin Address........ 21345 Ridgetop Circle
  Admin Address........ Dulles
  Admin Address........ 20166
  Admin Address........ VA
  Admin Address........ UNITED STATES
  Admin Email.......... vshostmaster@verisign.com
  Admin Phone.......... +1.7039484300
  Admin Fax............ +1.7039484331

Tech Name............ Melbourne IT Tech
  Tech Address......... 636 Ellis Street
  Tech Address.........
  Tech Address......... Mountain View
  Tech Address......... 94043
  Tech Address......... CA
  Tech Address......... UNITED STATES
  Tech Email........... tech@melbourneitdbs.com
  Tech Phone........... +1.8669073267
  Tech Fax............. +1.6509633266
  Name Server.......... f4.nstld.com
  Name Server.......... g4.nstld.com
  Name Server.......... l4.nstld.com
  Name Server.......... a4.nstld.com…

QR.com led the way selling for $325,000.

Empire.com sold for $135,000 and another two letter .com QE.com sold for $85,00

Marriages.com sold before the auction started for $36,000

Catfood.com sold for $62,000 after selling just a little more than 2 years ago at the TRAFFIC auction in Las Vegas in January 2010 for $41K, a 50% return.

Here are all the domain names that sold:

 …

Online bidding will be available on SnapNames.com

As we usually do we are opening up the poll to see which of the domains with a reserve of $100K or more you think will sell.

In all there are 21 domain names priced $100K or higher.

We will give you three picks but you must make them all at the same time before hitting submit on the poll on the right.

For bragging rights you can also make your picks in the comments.

You as always have the choice of  “None of the domains will sell”

Here are your choices:

 …

The auction closes at 9PM PST on Tuesday January 17th

I would bet this is the 1st time most of you are even hearing about the auction which hasn’t received a whole lot of promotion

However out of the 160 or so domains in the auction over 100 have a least one bid.

App.Pro is leading the way so far with 75 bids and a high bid of around $1,800 as of publication.

Included in the auction are some one letter .Pro domains and 1 numbered .Pro domains but with a reserve of something over $5K on these (there are some with $5K bids but reserve has not been met) not sure if any will sell.

Here is a complete list of the domain names in this special auction with the high bid as of time of publication:

The auction will be held on February 2 starting at 4:30 pm Pacific Time.

“Featured” domain names include:

Work.com
QR.com
Security.com
Host.com
Emails.com
Promo.com
QE.com
Unplugged.com
Planners.com
Juice.com
Eve.com
Eco.org
Platinum.com
Empire.com
Marriages.com
CivilUnion.com

Here are the domain names you can currently bid on and the reserve ranges for each.

Obviously more will be added to the list:

 …

As many of you are aware, RightHaven.com isn’t just a ordinary domain name.

The story has been followed very closely by VegasInc.com which reported that  Righthaven LLC, filed 275  lawsuits for copyright infringement seeking not only damages but the forfeiture of the domain name of the infringing site to them, RightHaven.

In one case they filed however, the defendant, was awarded costs of $63,720 against RightHaven.

So this auction on SnapNames.com is to raise money to cover part of Righthaven’s liability

The defendant who beat Righthaven a Wayne Hoehn attorney is Marc Randazza who put up a blog post on the case on his blog today saying:

“Righthaven went after hundreds of defendants in copyright cases.”

” Often, the defendants were innocent and engaged in fair use.”

“In all cases where a court has been asked, they found that Righthaven had no right to bring the suit in the first place. ”

“In all of their cases, Righthaven asked the court to award them not only money, but the defendant’s domain name.”

“After losing a case to my client, Wayne Hoehn, Righthaven is at least $63,000 in debt to him.”

” They refuse to pay.”

“Now their domain name is up for auction to the highest bidder.”

The auction at SnapNames.com closes On January 6th at 3:15pm EST in accordance with SnapNames.com normal closing procedure.

The current high bid as of time of publication is $775.

According to Compete.com the domain name Righthaven.com got over 600 visitors in November and as many as 2,300 a month is the past year.

The domain name RightHaven.com also has an Alexa Ranking of 3.3 Million.

Its one of those domains with quite a history and is certain to get some more bidders in the days ahead.

We will let you know how it winds up.

 …

As we told you the other day the domain name BustaRhymes.com dropped when his management company apparently  failed to renew the domain registration

In all there were  47 bidders and 8 willing to pay $100 or more, and 5 of those we willing to pay $500 or more.

So now that the domain name has sold, will the famous rapper file a UDRP on the domain?

According to compete.com the domain gets traffic as much as 2,800 visitors a month.

Does the new owner hope to make back his $1,300 in PPC revenue before the UDRP is filed?

Stay tuned.

 …

The auction begins Feb. 2, 2012.

There are 179 .Me domain names in the auction and here they are:

 …

There were 5 bidders on MoneyTalk.com willing to pay $10K or more.

Here are some other sales from NameJet.com today:

The domains reserve range is listed as between $1M-$5M and the $1M bid hasn’t hit the reserve.

Another two letter.com domain name, QX.com, has a bid of $80,000.  The reserve range of that domain is stated at $50K-$100K and the $80K bid has not hit the reserve.

The most active domain name so far is paternitytest.com which has 4 bidders and has met reserve with a current high bid of over $16K

Here are all of the domain names in the auction, with the bids as of time of publication: