I have been networking for 11 years online and have a few domains bought in 1996. (ah the good old days). I like to hold on to these for nostalgic personal reasons, but i know a work colleague bought one registered in 1998 for $30 from somebody who was selling. Turned out the site was "blackballed" in a few search engines and what a time he had trying to fix it! Hmmm..IMO...theres still a lot of domains out there up for grabs with new endings being added all the time. I think here in Europe .eu is coming.
Domains in the 12yo range are worth that much despite your particular name not being that great. The $100 really just covers the reg fees, so it would of cost you that much just to retain it if you originally purchased it back in 95. I've got 100s of domains from that era, and yes they do rank well especially if they have extensive archive.org history and some good long standing backlinks.
It all depends on the content of your site to determine the rank as well. You can't expect a domain name with no site content to rank well at all. If you buy a PR domain that has a ranking of say 3 or 4, that will rank good, but say you created a few inner pages new, they wouldn't have any PR value so I'm not sure how fast or if that would classify them as high search engine rank just because your home page has ranking. Maybe someone knows the answer to this.
That archive.org is pretty cool. Looked up Ebay's history. They have come a long way since their first entry. David
I agree with SweetFunny. If you've got an OLD domain, you tend to get a better deal @ SF, I LOVE your collection (Although I've seen a small part of it only)
Thanks, i can only remember a small part of it myself lol. I think the combined registration period of my portfolio would be in the Millennuim's.