@Edwin I can only think of three sane reasons for this behaviour:
1. Guardianship of a portfolio to leave as an inheritance as
@keys suggests.
2. Waiting for a better market whilst treating the portfolio as an investment.
3. Awaiting development.
Obviously it's not (3) in this case. I'm guessing it's (1).
Would you agree with my assumptions, or is there another psychological possibility?
I disagree and I've already explained why. But I'll try again.
People can sell 100 domains at £1,000 each or 1 domain at £100,000 each and end up with the same amount of cash. But the effort and expenses of doing the latter are much much less.
If you:
A) Have an amazing portfolio
and
B) Are prepared to hold out for a very high offer
then there's no reason why the occasional sale won't realise more than many domain sellers might make on hundreds.
But that only works for tip-top portfolios and very resilient domain owners. Most people would want to see some regular cashflow from their investment in registrations/renewals.
NOTE: I am
not advocating the above strategy. I am simply pointing out that it can be a strategy (one of many)
--------------------
Rick Schwartz is very open about his sales successes. If you look in the left-hand column of his blog, you'll see his sales listed and the prices he achieved.
http://www.ricksblog.com/ (the site's not updated these days so some of the links won't work)
He has 22 "priced" sales listed (all the recent ones made it into DNJournal so they're as verified as any other domain sale) adding up to just over US$23,000,000. That's about 1 sale a year since he's been in the business. I believe he has between 6,000-10,000 domains. If we take the very top end of that range, his renewals to date have cost him less than US$3,000,000 even if he held every single domain since day 1 (which he certainly did not)
He is a vocal supporter of the strategy I outlined earlier in this post, and has talked on many occasions about how important it is to keep saying "no" again and again and again in order to hook the occasional massive fish.