i have the opportunity to aquire an excellent generic .ac domain name.

in the uk all academic institutions have the extention .ac.uk, eg http://www.gla.ac.uk

anyone have any experience in transferring or selling these?

i think you have to contact nominet directly to register a domain like that.

Are we talking about .ac (Ascension Island) or .ac.uk (UK academic institutions)?

If it's the latter then it comes under Nominet (and it's a restricted SLD). If it's the former then (surprise surprise) it comes under the Ascension Island ccTLD registry whose website is at www.nic.ac.

we're talking about .ac (Ascension Island)

(just thuoght i'd point out it's relevance with the .ac.uk being popular over here).

no one ever traded in such names?

I'm sure a generic word under .ac would probably be worth something to someone - but that's the same for generic words under any TLD.

I can't imagine there being much interest from UK academic institutions which are all well-established under their ac.uk domains. I certainly wouldn't associate .ac with "academic" - I only associate .ac.uk with "academic" because it's what I grew up with Internet-wise.

Other than for some play on words (like mani.ac) I can't really see much use for .ac outside Ascension Island...