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An attorney bought HarrisWalz.com for less than $10 in 2020. He just sold it for $15,000.
New York trademark attorney Jeremy Green Eche is a Kamala Harris supporter who hopes the current Vice President is successful in her bid for the White House this year. But that’s not why he bought a number of web domains with her name in them back in 2020.
In his spare time, Eche snaps up unclaimed domain names for under $10 in hopes that he can one day sell them for a hefty profit. Also called domain investing, the pastime has paid off for him over the years.
“I buy domain names that consist of combinations of two last names that I hope will end up being a major party’s presidential ticket,” Eche told CBS MoneyWatch.
Four years ago, Eche purchased HarrisWalz.com — an internet domain made up of Harris’ last name and that of her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz — for $8.99. This week, Eche sold the domain to an individual buyer, who identified himself as a Harris supporter, for $15,000.
Eche, in an interview with CBS MoneyWatch, compared the sale to “hitting the jackpot.”
“I get to put whatever I want up on the website and have a ton of people look at it and usually I end up selling it,” he said. The buyer of the site is not affiliated with the Harris-Walz campaign, according to Eche. Currently, visitors to HarrisWalz.com are redirected to kamalaharris.com, the candidate’s official campaign page.
“He must have set up a redirect because he didn’t have anything better to do with it,” Eche said of the buyer. Eche did not receive an offer from the Harris campaign, he added. The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to CBS MoneyWatch’s request for comment about the domain name sale.
Eche said he owns about 60 domains, most of which are made up of the names of politicians from both the Democratic and Republican parties whom he considers to be likely presidential candidates, .
“I do try to do both sides, but it’s a lot harder to predict the Republican ticket than the Democratic ticket these days,” he said.
Not his first jackpot
This isn’t the first time Eche has cashed in on his hobby. In 2016, he sold Clintonkaine.com for $15,000, to an anonymous buyer through a domain broker. He later found out the purchaser worked for the Trump campaign, which used the site to post disparaging content related to his opponents. Eche said he recently bought back the domain for just under $1,000, in order to showcase his own comics. As of now, the domain appears to have been taken down.
Eche sold the HarrizWalz.com domain through Communer.com, his own startup, where he set the sale price at $15,000. He said he spent roughly $600 on domain names related to the current election cycle.
He dabbles in investing in corporate domain names, too, including web addresses for names of companies that he might one day want to run.
“But I don’t really invest in nonpolitical domains,” said Eche, whose sights remain focused on potential future presidential campaigns. He currently maintains “a bunch of Gretchen Whitmer domains, Walz domains and Nikki Haley domains.”
When asked if he was disappointed that the Harris campaign didn’t bite, Eche said he would’ve preferred to sell it to her.
“Every presidential campaign should allocate some of their billion-dollar budget toward securing their matching domain name, but I wasn’t going to get my hopes up,” he told CBS MoneyWatch.
At least 11 employees were taken to hospitals and residents were urged to shelter in place on Tuesday after an explosion at a Louisville, Kentucky, business.
The Louisville Metro Emergency Services reported on social media a “hazardous materials incident” at 1901 Payne St., in Louisville. The address belongs to a facility operated by Givaudan Sense Colour, a manufacturer of food colorings for soft drinks and other products, according to officials and online records.
Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg said emergency teams responded to the blast around 3 p.m. News outlets reported that neighbors heard what sounded like an explosion coming from the business. Overhead news video footage showed an industrial building with a large hole in its roof.
WLKY-TV
“The cause at this point of the explosion is unknown,” Greenberg said in a news conference. No one died in the explosion, he added.
Greenberg said officials spoke to employees inside the plant. “They have initially conveyed that everything was normal activity when the explosion occurred,” he said.
The Louisville Fire Department said in a post on the social platform X that multiple agencies were responding to a “large-scale incident.”
The Louisville Metro Emergency Services first urged people within a mile of the business to shelter in place, but that order was lifted in the afternoon. An evacuation order for the two surrounding blocks around the site of the explosion was still in place Tuesday afternoon.
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A rare square 37-carat emerald owned by the Aga Khan fetched nearly $9 million at auction in Geneva on Tuesday, making it the world’s most expensive green stone.
Sold by Christie’s, the Cartier diamond and emerald brooch, which can also be worn as a pendant, dethrones a piece of jewelry made by the fashion house Bulgari, which Richard Burton gave as a wedding gift to fellow actor Elizabeth Taylor, as the most precious emerald.
In 1960, Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan commissioned Cartier to set the emerald in a brooch with 20 marquise-cut diamonds for British socialite Nina Dyer, to whom he was briefly married.
Dyer then auctioned off the emerald to raise money for animals in 1969.
FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP via Getty Images
By chance that was Christie’s very first such sale in Switzerland on the shores of Lake Geneva, with the emerald finding its way back to the 110th edition this year.
It was bought by jeweler Van Cleef & Arpels before passing a few years later into the hands of Harry Winston, nicknamed the “King of Diamonds.”
“Emeralds are hot right now, and this one ticks all the boxes,” said Christie’s EMEA Head of Jewellery Max Fawcett. “…We might see an emerald of this quality come up for sale once every five or six years.”
Also set with diamonds, the previous record-holder fetched $6.5 million at an auction of part of Hollywood legend Elizabeth Taylor’s renowned jewelry collection in New York.
