In early 2005 I decided to try my hand at buying domains.. I forget the site I first used but I am thinking it was APlus something, or along those lines. Anyways, I decided, unknowingly to try and find some 3 letter domains... I started off with aaa, aab, aac, etc.. and in the first day found 3 of them, second day I was up to 7... this site actually took my money from me and sent me a confirmation email... then I decided to look on eBay and seen how much 3 letter domains were in demand... so I decided to list some of them on eBay to see how they would do.. within 24 hours I had about $3000 worth of bids on a total of 4 domains and was exstatic... then a few hours later my listings were withdrawn for the reason "Seller is not in possession of goods"... so I contacted the registrar company I used, who took my money for these domains... and after 3 or 4 days they got back to me and told me that it turns out although their system was showing them available that they weren't really available and that they would be more than happy to give me credit towards other domains... of course I was furious and asked for a refund, and a few weeks later finally got it. It took me about 6 months before I finally decided to register another domain name, and went with GoDaddy whom I have been with ever since.
GoDaddy did that for me a few times... showed 'investment.info' and x5u.com as available when they weren't
I bought my first domain about 2 years ago, but my very first domain name was supreme-designs.net, which a friend bought for me when I was offering a website design service when I was 12 back in 2001.