Crikey! And there I was thinking we were slap bang in the middle of a global recession. Things can't be that bad, I guess, if a retailer can find $5.1 million to pay for a new domain name. Yet that is exactly what Toys R Us has paid out in order purchase the toys.com domain, making it the biggest earner in the online name market so far this year.
Of course, it is not a record breaker as such. If you want to be involved in the real domain gold rush then you need a generic name associated with the adult industry which is probably why in years past porn.com has made $9.5 million and the big daddy of them all, sex.com, went for a massive $14 million a couple of years ago before the credit crunch hit.
The BBC quotes Ron Jackson from the Domain Name Journal as confirming the average sales price for a .com as being $2,688, down a hundred bucks from a year earlier.
Toys.com sold for a little more than that when it was auctioned previously, with the seller paying an impressive $1.25 million. Looks like that was one investment that the banks couldn't screw up then.