I found one persons account of what they experienced while going after an expired domain name that appears to be pretty accurate at least at time of authoring 3-05, and has a good deal of tips and info.
I sure did learn a lot about the whole process.
Maybe half the day was not wasted...lol
http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/a...xpiring-domain
Hopefully that link will work and help some others out on the subject.
The bottom line and what I am off to next is,
It would seem that if a domain expires, the registar has first crack at offering it for sale despite what would appear to be a breach of ICANN policy.
The info. may be outdated 3-05, but I am going to try to see what I can find by going to the major registers, Network solutions, (Cringe) and GoDaddy.
I have not found GoDaddy to be too promising at this point as they are listing many domains at very high prices from what I found so far.
hth?
Frank