As Rick Latona slowly announces his live domain auction inventory for the Traffic New York auction, excitement is mounting. This is going to be the first time Traffic allows an auctioneer other than Moniker, and the first multi-live domain auction conference featuring different auction companies. I think this is going to change the landscape of the live domain auction industry as upstarts try to dethrone the industry leader.  This can only bring good things for domain buyers and sellers.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock these past couple of years, you know that Latona has made a huge splash in the domain industry.  Hardly a week goes by where his company isn’t listed in DNJournal’s weekly sales report for a large sale or purchase. Knowing Rick, I bet he is more excited than anyone  at the prospect of changing the landscape of the live domain auction space. I would not be surprised at all to see several super premium domain names added to his current auction list just before the auction – all at crazy low reserve prices.

Other than long exclusivity periods, automatically renewing contracts, and high commissions for silent and live auctions, what’s also hurting the perception of the domain market is the fact that auctions have featuring great domain names at vastly over-inflated prices. Although it may be intriguing to think that an expensive name will sell, most of the time these names get passed on rapidly.

I think the market should determine the price of a domain name, and what better place to test the market than an auction attended and viewed by the biggest domain investors. Add prospective end user buyers that are encouraged to attend, and you’d expect to see tremendous sales on these great domain names after competitive bidding. I think auction houses have been too eager to get top names listed (for the auction and to wrap up exclusive rights for months after) and they haven’t said “no” to ridiculous reserve prices. Few sales has given the perception of a soft market, which isn’t accurate.

I believe Rick’s auction is going to have great names at very reasonable opening prices.  The market will determine the final selling price, and I believe there will be a new industry auction leader anointed.  I hope I don’t eat my words, but I predict Rick will sell an unheard of 75% of his listed domain names, and I predict he will sell upwards of $5 million in domain names.  I don’t know all of the names Rick is auctioning, but this is going to get everyone excited.

When you see that a HUGE domain deal is going to take place in the near future, who is the first person you think of that made the deal?  If you guessed Rick Schwartz, you would be correct.

Lightning doesn’t strike the same place twice, unless there’s a reason for it.  While some people have said that Rick Schwartz is “lucky,” I would strongly disagree.  Rick saw the potential in domain names many years ago, scoffed at selling most over the past few years, and has recently cashed in, while retaining some of his best names. Not only did Schwartz recently work out huge deals for iReport.com and Property.com (and RoomDividers.com last week), another deal is in the works that in Rick’s terms, “will blow the doors off the industry at the darkest time…..AGAIN!”

While the domain name in discussion hasn’t been publicly revealed yet, the deal is going to make headlines for Schwartz again – and for his friend Kevin who had a hand in the Property.com deal as well. While I won’t publicly congratulate Rick for this until the deal is done, I will say that from this and my own personal experience, it appears more end users are beginning to understand why they should own category defining generic domain names, and many are paying big bucks to get them.