Domaining - too good to be true?

I am a little squirrel. No, I haven't got a long tail, although I might have more than a passing interest in long tail keywords. Anyway, I went over to Flippa just to see what's going on. I don't use the place but it doesn't hurt to look sometimes. Anyway, I was absolutely SHOCKED by some of these prices, and the sellers' expectations seemed as though some of them are on another planet. Some of them are asking hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars for things which didn't look like anything more than a dud for sale.

I was shocked too when I looked at the recently sold section. A food blog which was only a few months old, with a lack of content, and IMO a mediocre domain, had sold for $5k+. That makes me suspicious - maybe they bought their own site or something.

So, here's the squirrely bit. I have a nice little stash of domains buried away in case of famine. So, I went over to my usual domaining forum to see if I might offload something so I can eat tonight. (Just kidding.) Sure, enough there were plenty of people wanting to buy. Reality check! They want generics, often geo-targeted, .com only, on a budget up to 50 bucks. That's only an example but I'm sure you know what I mean.

It's just interesting to see this huge gap between expectations of sellers on one marketplace and buyers on another. Of course, we know that people will buy the domain for 10 shillings on a domaining forum and then try to catch a newbie with it as a business for sale on another marletplace, but can it really be so easy?

How can a food blog that's only a few months old sell for 5 grand? How can we wipe away all this too good to be true stuff and see the reality underneath? Yes, I am aware that selling to an end-user is more profitable than selling to a domainer. But if you took things at face value, then you could go and buy a domain from, say, NamePros, in the morning, spend a couple of hours tarting it up with a turnkey website, and then sell it (as a business) on Flippa for thousands of bucks in the afternoon.

I still buy domains if I like the look of them. It takes imagination and effort to find good ones these days, but it can be done. I'm not sure if there really is much of a market for domains any more except as one of the raw materials required for churning out turnkeys.

Anyone here into buying and selling domains rather then websites? Any comments?