What's a domain name worth? For some fellow New Mexicans, apparently a lot.

The following story is from today's AP newswire:

=======================================

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (April 30) - What's in a name? For Eric ''Wall Street''
Wade and his two partners, it's more than $1 million.

The trio sold Wade's Internet name - wallstreet.com - to Players Only, a
Venezuelan company, for about $343,000 each.

Players Only plans to use the site for a gambling game based on stock
performance. Players Only has said it will offer stock quotes, company
information and online trading - along with gambling.

Wade, a former Albuquerque stockbroker, and a friend registered
wallstreet.com for $70 in 1994. They had planned to develop a full-scale
financial services site, but then they started getting unsolicited offers for
the name.

[snip]

For instance, the name altavista.com sold for $3.35 million last year. Other
recent sales include business.com for $150,000, internet.com for $100,000 and
tv.com for $15,000.

The name wallstreet.com attracted attention immediately, Wade said.

''Between 4,000 and 17,000 people a day would just type 'Wall Street' into
their browser. We called it background noise. People were just typing it in
to see what would happen.''

========================================

Wirt Atmar