Yesterday was an historic day at the TRAFFIC conference.  For the first time an auction was held not run by moniker.com.  Actually there were 2.

The first held by Rick Latona was a fast moving auction lead by an auctioneer and floor men which were cowboys.  The auctioneer and his team are used to selling horse, hogs and such, but yesterday in true fashion, moved quickly through the auctions.

As in any new venture there were mistakes.  For the first 15 or so domains the auctioneer would call “sold” even though the domain had not met reserve.  The online system also showed the domain as “sold”.

As the auction went on the auctioneer started announcing domains that were not sold, as being passed.  The online system then reflected those domains as passes, but the online system did not go back and adjust the earlier domains that were incorrectly called as sold.

So to this point I’m not 100% sure which of the ealier domains sold or did not sell.

I think this was the fault of the auctioneer and not an intent of Rick Latona.  I credit it to a mix up in signals and growing pains.

Some domains were sold under their stated reserve, only possible because the auction house owed the domains and was not representing third parties.

Countryclubs.com which had a stated reserve between $100K-$200K sold for $85K.

Spreadsheets.com which had a stated reserve of $40K-$50K sold for $25K.

There may have been a few more, but again it was hard to tell.

Some domains had bids on them online prior to the auction most notably mcc.com for had a pre-bid of $195K which was in fact the winning bid.

All and all a decent first try and an acceptable result in this economy.

The second auction held by Aftermarket was had a completely different tone, due to their auctioneer and floorpeople.  Aftermarket auction was much more “traditional” low key, much slower moving.

Unfortunately the room had less than 1/2 of the people in attendance than the Rick Latona Auction.

I think the auction would have had more people if it was held right after Rick Latona’s instead of breaking them up with a session.

Approximately 1/2 of the domains at aftermarket sold.

Online bidding was quite active.  Domaintools they had more than 600 people signed up for online bidding.

In this auction domains had actual minimum bids, so there was no bidding under the minimum, leaving the auctioneer spending 2 minutes or more asking for an opening bid which never came 50% of the time.

When there were bids, the aucitoneer spent what seemed a very long time asking for more bids before she closed the auction.

The auctioneer only had 2 floor, very low key floor people, so the room did not have the “energy” of Rick’s auction which had many high energy floor guys.

Domains that did not sell were clearly passed and winning bids were clearly announced.

As far as the results go, there were just a few “Big Money” domains in auction.  Aftermarket wanted to go for lower priced domains and try to get a high percentage sold, so there was no way the auction was going to produce a big number (unless husband and wife sold, which it did not with a reserve of $200K).

To truly determine the results of both auctions we will have to wait to see what the Moniker auction does today.

Should be interesting.