Paula Deen is an American celebrity chef and television personality known for her Southern cooking style. Born in 1947, in Albany, Georgia, she achieved fame through her successful restaurant, The Lady & Sons, in Savannah, Georgia, and her cooking shows on the Food Network, such as “Paula’s Home Cooking” and “Paula’s Best Dishes,” which showcased classic comfort food recipes. Paul Deen has authored several cookbooks and her web site is PaulaDeen.com.
That being said, Paula Deen Ventures is a separate entity that manages Paula Deen’s intellectual property, which also includes the domain name PDN.com.
In the past, PDN.com was being used as a URL forwarder to PaulaDeen.com.
Due to some unforeseen event, PDN.com expired and dropped, becoming the youngest LLL .com domain name. It was caught by DropCatch, where it has been sitting in an auction that has increased with every bid. The top bid is at $25,000 dollars, a price that the auction’s winner is expected to pay upon its end in 2 days.
But will there be some controversy to mix up this auction?
Due to the previous owner’s fame, PDN.com is essentially a “hot potato” that cannot be separated easily as merely yet another LLL .com that expired and dropped. We are also aware of at least two industry professionals that have reached out to the Paul Deen network, to inform them of the incident.
In that sense, expect a potential acquisition to become problematic. Then again, maybe someone from the Paula Deen network might jump in and bid on the domain PDN.com, to acquire it at any price.
What would you do?
Update, 8/4/2023: The domain has been sold for $143,000 dollars. Winner is the account “Rabbitsfoot.”
I reached out to Paula Deen and got no response, so I bid $22,222 and now it’s at $30k+.
If I was Paula Deen, I would never try to buy my own domain name back at auction. I would get lawyers involved trying to get my domain name back from the registry, but that probably would not work out in my favor.
Since this domain was only forwarded, they don’t really need this domain name, but it’s gotta suck knowing that she could have sold it for over $30k+.
Update, 8/4/2023: The domain has been sold for $143,000 dollars. Winner is the account “Rabbitsfoot.”
@Anunt – You’re a good man.