I wonder if anyone can explain this:

A dream domain of mine was finally dropped last week after it had expired. However when I took action to register it, someone had already grabbed it - I saw clearly his registration info in the whois database and went "oh darn!".

Well last night I checked the domain again out of boredom - it showed up as available! I registered it right away and the registration went through. Now the domain has propagated and gone live.

How can a domain name be dropped twice in a week? I'm not gonna complain of course now that it's mine (and please stay mine). But, wasn't that kind of weird?

Since it was a "dream domain" you were in fact asleep the first time :D

I rubbed my eyes twice and woke up.

No, seriously, I took mental notes of that guy's name and registration date. In fact I checked at 3 different registrars just to make sure: Verisign, 000domains, and Joker - Each time he showed as the new registrant, fresh out of the whois.

I've been registering domains for over 3 years and had never seen anything like it prior to this incident. The good thing is it happened to work to my advantage.

There is a very short window - 5 days I think - when a registrar can release a newly registered name. This is rarely done, and would generally only be done for failure to pay or some similar reason.

-t

Its possible the new registrant used a fake credit card, and the registrar picked up on it an let the domain go.