.xxx sales mystery – 4 domains totaling $5,445 confirmed and 3 domains totaling $48,825 pending

I made a post earlier today saying that no premium .xxx domains have been sold in the past three weeks since ICM Registry put up a list of over 1000 .xxx domain names. Kevin Murphy at Domain Incite made a post shortly after mine saying that there have indeed been .xxx sales. Kevin said that he compared the 2 lists and found 8 domains to have been removed, 2 had been added and a few domains had changed prices.

I busted my head for hours to see what I did wrong. Did I lose the first version of the list? I was sure I had the original list in csv and pdf and these were identical to the current ones at icmregistry.com/premium at the “Download All” link. Then I found Acro’s post at DomainGang.com (dated 24th of October, the day of the announcement) and confirmed that I had the correct version as 1 of the 2 domains that Kevin said were added later was present: trannyporn.xxx. Acro had only domains price up to $2000 so I was sure that the other domain trannys.xxx was present as well.

So what was going on? I am sure I now know…

Since the csv and pdf files were identical something else was going on. I copied the domain list from the html file and compared it to both the original and the current lists:
7 domains are missing from both lists:
888.xxx ($1,320)
bet.xxx ($3,465)
celebrities.xxx ($15,015)
ddd.xxx ($330)
freeliveporn.xxx ($330)
massage.xxx ($18,810)
moms.xxx ($15,000)

That leaves own.xxx ($1,485) that Kevin claims as sold. This domain is not on any list. Also I didn’t see any changes in pricing on any of the 1046 original domains.

So it seems that ICM Registry doesn’t update the csv and pdf files. I thought that the csv file would be created from a database on the fly but I was wrong. I should have been more careful. But I am not sure if the 7 domains were deleted before of after my post as the ICM representative that commented on my post said that ICM hadn’t yet removed the sold domains from the list.

But that still doesn’t explain the missing own.xxx domain, the different prices and the 2 added domains. Own.xxx has a last update whois date of 05-Oct-2012. That means that it was sold long before the 24-Oct reveal. So I think that Kevin has some preliminary version of the list that he got directly from ICM Registry. This would explain all the differences he sees between the lists. Or maybe Kevin got the html version that was outdated at the time of the reveal, leaving only the csv and pdf files as updated at the time of the announcement. Maybe Kevin can shed some light on this… Or maybe Acro can tell me how he got his list.

So now let’s focus on the sales. 4 of the 7 domains that were deleted from the original list have been sold and whois has been updated:
888.xxx ($1,320)
bet.xxx ($3,465)
ddd.xxx ($330)
freeliveporn.xxx ($330)

The other 3 sales are probably pending as whois has not been updated and still shows them as reserved:
celebrities.xxx ($15,015)
massage.xxx ($18,810)
moms.xxx ($15,000)

ICM Registry claims $200,000 of sales but I see $5,445 confirmed and $48,825 pending sales. And that is if the domains were bought without any negotiations.

Michael Berkens wrote a post on his blog on the 27th of October criticizing ICM’s move to put 1000 .xxx domains for sale all at once. I made a comment at his post:

I totally agree with Michael.

That was a really bad move from ICM registry. It seems desperate and not thought through.
Nobody wants to see a registry putting all the reserved domains on sale.
Well actually they kept a lot and they didn’t tell why. This whole search rank is kinda funny since they kept a lot of the reserved domains out of it. Why isn’t cams.xxx at the list? Or pornstar.xxx?

Also what is the point of a Buy It Now button when you can’t buy it now or even see the price?
When you click on the Buy It Now button, a contact form comes up with no mention of the price that is posted at the registry website. That could also mean that further negotiations can be made and the $7.7 million could be $5 million or even lower with bulk purchases. (Especially with a few domains that noone would register even if they were free)