There is a myth that has been circulating around the Internet for years, and it goes something like this:

Domain names are scarce - and running out - therefore all domain names are valuable.

It's true that each domain name is, by definition, unique. But that alone is not enough to guarantee value. Think back to the last time you bought a lottery ticket... That was also a "unique" item - in that it bore a different number sequence from any other ticket - and there was certainly a finite supply of lottery tickets - yet the value of any lottery ticket other than the eventual winning one turned out to be... ZERO!

Now the situation is not quite as grim with domain names. There are some extremely valuable domain names out there (some sales have already been made for multi-millions of dollars, and other names might fetch seven figures if put on the market). But for every great domain name there are 1,000 junk ones.

A parallel can be drawn between the domain name market and the art market. The Picassos and Rembrandts of the domain name market are the names such as "business.com" and "sex.com". Behind them are a much larger (but still relatively small) pool of well-known artists, and then there are an again much larger group of relative unknowns, whose paintings might command a few thousand dollars at auction. Go down another level, and you have the amateurs whose works might sell to friends and family for a hundred dollars or so. And then you have a vast ocean of art that the average person would have to be paid to hang on their walls! So it goes with domain names...