The $5.1 million was the final bankruptcy auction price at which Toys. com was finally acquired by ToysRUs, but not without frenzied bidding hostilities! The auction, which commenced at about 1pm CST, dragged on till about 4:25 pm.

The chief bidders for the company - other than the the winner, ToysRUs - comprised the back-up bidder National A1 Advertising, domain investors Frank Schilling and Larry Fischer and Ari Goldberg who were the earlier stalking horse bidders.

Except ToysRUs and domain holding company National A1 - which owns domains like free. com, girls. com, boys. com, and divorce. com - all the other prospective bidders abandoned the auction at $3 million. For the last $2 million, ToysRUs and National A-1 volleyed back and forth for hours, with $5,000 bid additions and further prolonging the process by seeking breaks before announcing their offsetting bids.

Finally, the $5,100,000 ToysRUs bid went under the hammer to trump National A1's bid of $5,000,000!

The highly eventful re-auction was ordered by the bankruptcy court, literally within a few days after Toys. com's sale of a mere $1,250,000 as part of a bankruptcy court arrangement.

The proceedings at the re-auction are another indicator of the fact that domain values and auction selling prices depend on factors like how well-publicized is the auction is; who is involved in the auction; and how desirable is the domain!