If it's a good domain, you're certainly not the only one who contacted him about the domain just out of curiosity. He's getting a lot of emails about it.
If he did what you suggest and replied to everyone with a ridiculous price -- "Hi, USD 20 million, ok?" -- then he'd just get a second wave of emails from people trying to haggle:
"That's outrageous! The domain is worth $100k maximum. I'll pay you $2k and give you 0.1% equity in my awesome startup. Deal?"
And if he doesn't reply to that, then the person will send another email with the worthless offer slightly tweaked, and so on... So he's better off setting a precondition that prevents the pointless replies, basically "I'll talk to you only if you have a legal department with more than 20 people."
It's honestly not that good of a domain though. I don't think it's worth $100k. Maybe $10k, although I'm not about to spend that much on a domain (but maybe someone will).
Anyway, good luck to him. I hope when he is ready to sell his domain there is someone looking to buy it for the kind of money he's expecting.
If he did what you suggest and replied to everyone with a ridiculous price -- "Hi, USD 20 million, ok?" -- then he'd just get a second wave of emails from people trying to haggle:
"That's outrageous! The domain is worth $100k maximum. I'll pay you $2k and give you 0.1% equity in my awesome startup. Deal?"
And if he doesn't reply to that, then the person will send another email with the worthless offer slightly tweaked, and so on... So he's better off setting a precondition that prevents the pointless replies, basically "I'll talk to you only if you have a legal department with more than 20 people."