Mystery Buyer Coughs Up $1.5 Million For Russia.com

The domain name russia.com has been purchased by an undisclosed buyer for $1.5 million through marketplace Sedo, reports Yakov Sadchikov over on the Quintura blog.

Currently an online guide for travelers who would like to visit the country, Russia.com is an operation of Paley Media, a Seattle, WA-based consultancy firm that runs the show for many a country domain name, including Algeria.com, Scotland.com, Nepal.com and Ukraine.com. The domain names are themselves owned by NewMedia Holdings, a company that registered the domain name russia.com back in 1995.

It’s unclear why NewMedia / Paley Media decided to offload the high-value domain name, but I reckon one million and a half dollars is a fair price for a website that currently attracts a mere 9,000 unique visitors per month according to Compete. On the other hand, Korea.com was sold earlier this year for a reported $5 million.

We recently wrote about dominance of number of .com domains and also noted that .com domain registrations were starting to turn around again after a poor 2008. It looks like values of .com domains may be rising again: insurance broker Insure.com just sold its name and corresponding website for a whopping $16 million last month.

Other large domain purchases this year include the sale of Candy.com for $3 million, Toys-R-Us’ acquisition of Toys.com for $5.1 million and the sale of Fly.com to Travelzoo for $1.8 million.