Exciting News - New Domain Name Soon!
Last Edited: 30 March 2025This is a long post but people might find it fascinating to read about this collector's 20 year chase for the right domain names - yes, names, plural. Why get just one domain name when you can get all keyword variations? Read on to find out all the details. But if it's too long or detailed for you then here is the summary: this site will soon be re-branding to Mini Oil Lamps . com, plus finally all keyword variations of Mini/Miniature - Oil/Kerosene - Lamp/Lamps in the dot com extension are now owned by the collector, the set of eight domain names will now point to the same website. Anyone typing any combination of those words into their web browser will end up here.
In the How It All Started article I went into detail about acquiring the domain name Mini Kerosene Lamps . com for this website back in 2004. But a lot of detail was left out, and for good reason. Over about two decades I have been trying to capture two domain names that other people had already registered and held for all that time. I had to conceal this information so as not to alert those domain investors about my level of interest. When those investors are aware of your interest they may hold the domain(s) indefinitely and often ask for many hundreds/thousands of dollars or higher. Sometimes they are justified in doing so and asking those prices, but sometimes they are being unrealistic and thus viewed as "extorting" end user buyers. I am a small time domain investor myself, plus also an end-user buyer like with this lamp domain set I have now completed. Hence I see both sides of the coin from the buyer's AND seller's perspective when it comes to domain names and their asking prices. I am nowhere near as experienced and knowledgeable as many other domain investors but I have enough to be able to have a few somewhat accurate opinions.
One of the important bits of information I left out was my ownership of other domain names similar to Mini Kerosene Lamps . com. I owned three keyword variations of that name: Mini Kerosene Lamp . com, Miniature Kerosene Lamp . com, and Miniature Kerosene Lamps . com. Those other three domain names were redirected to the primary domain Mini Kerosene Lamps . com. Now it might be a bit confusing seeing all those names so I'll explain and then re-arrange them for clarity - they cover all four domains for the keyword variations Mini/Miniature, Kerosene, and Lamp/Lamps like this:
Mini
Kerosene
Lamp
.
com
Mini
Kerosene
Lamps
.
com
<-Primary
domain,
the
other
three
were
redirected
to
this
one.
Miniature
Kerosene
Lamp
.
com
Miniature
Kerosene
Lamps
.
com
So anybody searching for any variation of those key words in their browser will find this site. Since this site started in December 2022 all four of those domain names brought visitors here. But these collectible lamps are generally known as KEROSENE lamps only within Australia where I am... the rest of the world know them better as OIL lamps. And here is where my problem was: I wanted the similar four domain set for OIL lamps too. I also wanted to make the domain name shorter - MiniKeroseneLamps being 17 characters long while MiniOilLamps being 12 characters. By 2007 (along with the four KEROSENE domains) I owned two of them:
Mini
Oil
Lamp
.
com
Mini
Oil
Lamps
.
com
but the other two
Miniature
Oil
Lamp
.
com
Miniature
Oil
Lamps
.
com
were owned by domain investors. They were both offered for sale at different domain marketplaces. Miniature Oil Lamp . com was simply listed as "Make Offer" while Miniature Oil Lamps . com was $1149 and crept up to $1249 and then $1349 in later years. In 2009/10 I had made an offer for both of those domains - USD$100 and $250 respectively. I felt that no-one other than myself would ever be seriously interested enough to make a reasonable offer, and thought they were more than fair offers at the time. Both offers were rejected. One of them even raised their minimum offer amount to 5 times my offer just after I had made it. I wasn't going higher so over the ensuing months I forgot about the domains and ignored any follow up emails to those initial offers trying to elicit more. I already made offers pretty much at my limit (actually, looking back I was shocked to see I had offered so much!) And because (I felt) they were so greedy I wasn't going to re-offer even the same amount - they rejected it, the offers expired, they never got back to me with anything near my offers, so they lost a sale. I would not have given such generous offers today, perhaps $50-$100 is all I would have paid for each of those, maybe slightly more for the plural, but it's not for commercial use so even that amount is a stretch.
I predicted that those investors would hold the domains for several/many more years with no offers and then eventually cut their losses and let them expire. Note that currently it is over USD$10 per year to renew every .com domain so those investors who hold hundreds/thousands of domains pay a small fortune in renewal fees each year. Eventually they are forced to let some of their domains expire or "drop" if they feel they will never sell them and recover their outlay.
And that's exactly what happened. In 2017 the first of those two missing domains (Miniature Oil Lamps . com) expired. There is this thing called a "drop catch" where you pay a fee to a company to "catch" that dropping domain. Sometimes multiple people want the same expiring domain and hence there are some companies that invest big bucks in infrastructure that can grab them within milliseconds of dropping. Each group of expiring names has a scheduled drop time and they can calculate down to a fraction of a second as to when it will become available and then start hitting the domain registry with registration attempts many times per second from multiple computers. Some domain names can be worth tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars or more so catching the right ones can be very lucrative. I put in two of those orders at different drop catchers but still failed to get it - it went to a big and well known drop catcher which is often accused of asking for many thousands of dollars to sell them back to people/companies when they accidentally let their domains expire. The asking price started off at $3995, and gradually over the next year it was lowered to $2995 and $1995. Nobody bought it or showed interest, nor did it appear to get many visitors via direct type-in traffic, so it was dropped again after that one year. Thus in 2018 one of my previously set up drop catches managed to snag it for a much more reasonable $15. One down, one to go.
Now, while the set of four KEROSENE domains were all pointing to this website, the first two OIL domains I held were just set to the registrar's standard parking page. I did not want to redirect those to this website because if they would do some research it might tip off the domain investors as to what I had planned. So of course with the newly caught Miniature Oil Lamps . com I did exactly the same thing, a standard parked page but with a for sale or make offer form. Another thing: I left it at the registrar where it was caught and did not transfer it to the same place I held the other six domains. Yet another obfuscation was to renew the recently caught domain one year at a time rather than for several years in advance as I sometimes did with the other six. A yearly renewal is a general indicator that the domain is held by an investor, while multiple year renewals can be an indicator of an end user. Any of these above might have tipped off the last remaining investor as to who now owned it and so I had to deliberately send the wrong signals. Now it was just a matter of waiting for something to happen to the last one.
In 2020 and 2023 I got two offers for Miniature Oil Lamps . com through different channels. I did not respond to the first offer and thus could not see the offer amount (it would have required creating an account and potentially revealing my identity) and I rejected the second offer of $20. I suspect it might have been the remaining investor holding Miniature Oil Lamp . com fishing for information and/or trying to pick up the matching plural for peanuts (funny... domain investors often complain about lowball offers yet I suspect many of them do precisely that themselves). This suspicion is heightened by the fact that a world renowned domain broker emailed me directly in 2021 following up on my $100 offer from 12 years prior. This broker deals with 5, 6 and 7 figure domain sales but contacted me about a $100 offer over a decade ago on a sub $1000 domain. What's going on there?!?! I politely but brutally said that the investor is being too greedy thinking that his domain is worth so much and it will likely never sell. I showed no interest at the $500 minimum offer price he was seeking and I didn't even make another offer of $100. After that it was back to just watching and waiting. I'm sure that both the investor and broker thought of me - "Typical ignorant domain buyer, doesn't know what domains are really worth", yet the end result of this 20 year chase seems to show me a totally different picture.
Around 2010 I had set up what is know as "domain alerts" on those 2 missing domains. When certain changes occur with a domain such as nameserver or expiry date changes an email alert is automatically sent. Over the years I had received at least 2-3 per year per domain indicating that the domain was renewed or the nameservers changed for various reasons. One cash flow strategy of some domain investors is to allow the domain to expire for up to 30 days beyond the actual expiration date and then renew just before it proceeds further down the expiry path (it's a complex and lengthy 75 day process which I won't go into) and every year I would get such notifications that the nameservers are changed at the beginning and end of this initial 30 day part. This year 2025 was no different, and just before going to bed at 12:30am I got such an email for the missing Miniature Oil Lamp . com. Normally the owner would just renew at the last moment and then the domain status would soon return to normal. I checked it out and this time however I saw that the domain was in an active expiry auction, meaning that anyone can bid on the domain and then the former owner can no longer renew and recover it. I scrambled to log in to the registrar account I had set up years earlier waiting for this exact scenario. I forgot my login password. I was shaking in a frenzy to reset it and get that bid in just in case the owner still had intentions to renew. Some 5 or so minutes later I had done it, the bid was in, and now it was a matter of beating anyone else in a 10 day auction.
I must say that the 10 day wait was a bit painful. I was so close yet could still be nicked at the finish line. My computer or internet could crash at the wrong time and I'd be unable to up my bid if required, someone could outbid me and I wouldn't or couldn't go higher, or some other unforeseen could snatch it away. Stress. I checked at least once a day to see if anyone else placed a bid. On the last day I woke up at 3:00am, waiting and watching for the approximate 5:20am auction end. In the end however mine was the only bid. I wasn't sure if the former owner was going to bid to try to recover it, but obviously he didn't. Note that placing a bid on a domain actually draws attention to it from other bidders, yet not even seasoned domain investors who scour through these expiring auctions were interested. In my opinion that speaks volumes about the $hundreds/thousands asked for these domains over two decades. $10 and it was mine. Finally. Did the owner knowingly allow it to expire, or was it an oversight? I'd love to find out but doubt I ever will.
After over a year of inactivity on this site I had forgotten the admin login password too. Oops. There was no recovery email set either. Double oops. It took me over a week to try different ones and finally figure it out. Note to self: use it regularly or write it down somewhere. Perhaps this final domain acquisition is now a (good) slap in the face and a reward for me to somewhat get back into it and continue adding more lamps.
Finally in summary, the entire eight domain set of:
Mini
Oil
Lamp
.
com
Mini
Oil
Lamps
.
com
<-
This
will
be
the
new
primary
domain
name.
Miniature
Oil
Lamp
.
com
Miniature
Oil
Lamps
.
com
Mini
Kerosene
Lamp
.
com
Mini
Kerosene
Lamps
.
com
Miniature
Kerosene
Lamp
.
com
Miniature
Kerosene
Lamps
.
com
has
been
acquired
and
will
all
point
to
the
same
site.
None
of
the
domain
names
are
for
sale.
Time to celebrate. Yay! Just got to think about how to celebrate... :)
See you at the new site. The content will be exactly the same, just migrated over and given the new name.