I haven't seen many, or even any, that I can recall being sold on the forums for $2500+...... sure, $2K-$2.5K for awhile and that has tapered off somewhat at least for now (who knows what's coming or how long it will take) but I look at it like this.... those GREAT sales were mostly if not all on major auction houses (with some BIN to endusers as well I assume), which take their 15%-20% cut or are "expired" auctions so noone but them reaps the benefits anyways. Which brings the actual Net price down for private sellers to what most LLLL's have been selling for recently amongst resellers on the boards. So while I agree that prices have leveled and tapered off a bit even, at the auction houses and on the forums, I am not alarmed. I can confirm that what hugo_strange has said, ie that there HAVE been domains offered, AND bought, at $1900-$2100 range here on the forum lately is indeed true, that is for me the result in most cases of one of 2 things:
1) someone (like Mr Packer, with a great volume, but who has different views on whether it will soon, or ever, reach such a peak across the board on the bulk of his domains) decides that it's better to cash some if not all out now even though the prices have dipped, since the ROI on these regfee/cheap purchased domains is still phenomenal and money in the bank.
or 2) people that bought into chips late, while they were rising, and took a gamble hoping for a quick flip and ROI... but, soon as the market cooled they were worried they would have so much money tied up in a domain and maybe NEVER get it back out so rush to resell now even at a slight loss rather than risk any worse damage later.
I love 4-letter .coms. I got into them right as the first bubble was rising up, made some money, but also got left holding some overpaid inventory for years, made some ok enduser sales, and sold some over the years at a loss. But I never lost faith in them. Where the market is now, and going, is a mystery to me too... but exciting times! I have sold several in the last year, when it seemed prices were already great, only to watch it keep climbing. I have bought some recently when it seemed "risky", ie maybe this is already the "peak", only to have them worth double within a month. And I have held onto a fair number as well to see where things go. Side note, in one week EXACTLY a year ago, I sold 4 (unbeknownst at the time) Chips that were "already" Quad premium too for sale on the forums.... had bought them early 2008. No real offers, no interest from the leads I pursued, not even much interest on the forums. Wound up selling them to the best offer of the time 1 year ago, at a loss even, for under $300 each. Less than a year later they were worth $2K+. Crazy. My, how times change. And how they will keep changing.
