This is shaping up to be a great rags to riches story. Published today in DomainesInfo.fr is a piece on the upcoming auction of £.com, one of a rare breed of single character .COM domains that were registered years ago.

Richard Haigh, the domain's lucky owner, claims to have registered it 9 years ago for the equivalent of 25 euros. And the asking price for the upcoming auction on the name is? A cool million, pounds that is (close to 2 million US dollars).

£.com is actually an IDN, that is a domain name using non-ascii characters. As such, it can only be accessed through latest generation, post 2006, browsers. It seems there's also a €.com domain, which is currently unused. The £.com auction may give its owner a few ideas though…