information Detected: Frank Schilling Sells ALPD.com; The Story of the Five Figure Donations.com Sale…

In this edition of Detected Domains, we get the backstory to a domain sale that has just entered Escrow.com’s holding account, and we also find out what some investors have bought and sold over the past few days. In China, there has been some activity amongst short .CC domains and four-letter .COM’s.


Frank Schilling sold ALPD.com from his portfolio. The domain had a $37,200 “buy now” price at Afternic and the name looks to have been acquired by Apptronics, a Chinese company who have a product called Advanced Laser Phosphor Display (ALPD).

4.CN acquired more four-letter .COM domains on behalf of their clients, and have also picked up HK.cc. “HK” is the popular global abbreviation for Hong Kong.

As announced on this morning's @DomainSherpa review, Andrew Rosener sold the domain Happiness.com for $250,000 after acquiring it for a five figure fee last year. The name has now moved into WHOIS privacy at Uniregistry.

James Booth of BQDN.com acquired GHM.com. According to DomainIQ’s WHOIS history tool, the name was acquired by James from his brother Andy, who himself acquired it in mid 2016.

The two-letter domain QP.com has left Sedo’s escrow service, with the name now registered under privacy at GoDaddy. It’s likely the domain is owned by a Chinese investor.

Ali Zandi (@Zandibot) bought enamouring.com, lensecleaner.com and thinkdigital.com amongst many others.

62.com acquired jr.cc on behalf of a client. A 62.com client was behind the purchase of JR.com recently, so it’s likely the same person that bought this name.

The domain Donations.com has been sold, and the name is in Escrow.com’s holding account. The domain has an interesting back story, told to me by Keith, the seller’s broker, who has a close connection with the domain:

Several years ago while doing a random search I discovered that Donations.com and Donations.org had expired. Both were owned by the same person since 1996. His WHOIS email wasn't valid but I was able to track him down. He renewed the domains and we began to discuss working together to build them. Unfortunately he passed away before we got the project going.

Once I learned of his passing, I did research and made contact with his wife (not domainers and older folks). She couldn't gain access to the account with the domains so she put me in touch with her brother in law. It took a few weeks of me working with network solutions but we got control of the domains. I held the domains and the 3 of us decided to build them. We spent 5 figures and almost 2 years time but the developers failed to produce a working site.

We were forced to sell the domains to recover expenses and to get the family additional funds. Donations.org was sold for about $23,000 by a broker that we reached out to. For the .com I acted as the broker on behalf of the owner. The seller doesn't want the exact price revealed but it was high 5 figures. All in all it was a good deal for both, buyer and seller.

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The name has been sold to a domain investor called Jason (@Jason.tv), and the sales price was in the high five figure range. According to Jason, he has also been able to acquire many other "Donations" domains including donations.me, donations.tv and donations.xyz.

Jason told me:

I plan to develop - I would like develop a donations platform allowing anyone to create a donations campaign for any cause. I have been domaining for little over 7 years I never imagined myself acquiring a domain like this. Donations.com is a domain I have now secured under my belt and will be with me for the rest of my life, I am extremely proud and excited to see for what the future will hold for the name.

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Thanks to DomainIQ for the data included in this article.

Quotes have been edited for clarity.