I purchased a domain name for a project back in 2003. It was called Downzine.com (Me and my friend stole his dad's credit card to book this domain name) We were 50-50 partners for this new venture
After the domain name I started learning PHP and cPanel etc. But that 1 year went by very fast as I was dealing with 1.44 Floppy disks and 56 KBPS dial up connection.
Next year once again the renewal came in and we were unable to renew it as that credit card was cancelled by my father's friend. LOL. :D
Went back to normal life and fast forward 2005 I was online and thought about my domain name. Therefore I searched it in MSN.com (Because we didn't liked those colors of Google in those days. Nowadays they are just branded colors so what to do)
I landed on Sedo.com where one guy was selling Downzine.com for 250 USD.
That is the day I searched a bit more and actually found out that domains can be held onto and sold and that night I landed on Namepros.com
Good thing is I somehow got back my 1st domain name Downzine.com in 2006 and still have it with me.