About 18 months ago, someone was selling a batch of 10 domains for £50 - two of which I though were good, and the others just ordinary. So I bought the domains, with the plan to build some mini-sites using the two good domains, and I hadn't thought what to do with the other 8.
Then, a couple of weeks ago I received an email asking thenatural.co.uk (which was one of the 8 ordinary ones) was for sale.
A couple of emails of negotiation later, the domain was sold for , the seller made a payment and domain transfered to them.
The domain isn't a dictionary word, but obviously matched the person's new business venture or idea (the sites not live yet so I can't see more), but even for that domain selling it at 50+ times what I bought it for (which was the same as the normal .UK domain name renewal), it just goes to show that the lack of good domains means that there is still a market and people willing to pay for half-decent domain names.
There wasn't even a holding page on that site, and if there had been, I think that I could have sold it for even more.
We have about 40+ other good domains that are ear-marked for being websites in their own right, so the plan is to try and get these mini-sites up and running as soon as possible in order to firstly get some revenue from them, and also potentially sell - as the majority are quite brandable terms.
Keep checking here for details of the new sites as and when they launch.