Toys.com, Birthdays.com, Hobbies.com Sold at Auction

Thursday, February 5th, 2009

Millions of dollars in domains sold at auction.

The biggest domain name auction of the year took place yesterday, but you probably haven’t heard about it. And Oversee.net, parent company of Moniker , was a bidder, not a seller.

Yesterday at 10 am substantial assets from The Parent Company were scheduled to be auctioned off at the law offices of Pachulski Stang Ziehl & Jones LLP. The Parent Company owns a number of online retailers including eToys. Among the domain names owned by The Parent Company are Toys.com, eToys.com, Toys.org, Birthdays.com, Birthday.net, eBirthdays.com, eKids.com, Hobbies.com, iToys.com, Pinata.com, and ePregnancy.com.

A number of companies submitted qualified starting bids prior to the auction, ranging from $10,000 to $500,000. The final sale amount of the domains was in the millions. Top sales include:

ePregnancy.com, Baby Universe and Dreamtime Baby, eToys.com and related eToys names for $2.15 M
Birthdays.com, Pinata.com, eParties.com $200,000 sold to Done Ventures
Toys.com $1.25M sold to Faculty Lounge
eKids.com $17,000
Hobbies.com and iToys.com $102,000 sold to Domain Equity

Among the bidders were:

Amazon.com (through a subsidiary)
1800diapers.com, which owns Diapers.com
Oversee.net, parent company of DomainSponsor , Moniker, and Snapnames
Vertical Axis, LLC, familiar to most domainers
Domain Equity, LLC (involves Monster Venture Partners)
Drugstore.com

The Parent Company filed for bankruptcy in December 2008 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court District of Delaware.

Attorneys from Pachulski Stank Ziehl & Jones were not immediately available for comment.