Domain appraisal services: Are automated appraisals worth the cost at any price?

[Sabres]

"I've been doing a bit of domain name speculating and am now up to about 160 names.

I have been buying the express appraisals with each domain name making the cost for a domain name plus appraisal cost less than buying the domain name alone. In other words, the domain name cost very little.

Most of the domain names I've purchased have been ""appraised"" in the range of $48.00 to $134.00.

Last night I purchased a few more names, and one of them was valued at much much more. I was doing the ""express appraisals"" but for this name I upgraded to a ""certified appraisal"" and am waiting to hear back.

What I want to know is from reading this forum, many are saying that the automated appraisals are not any good and are apparently not accurate? With GoDaddy the express appraisal you get within a couple of minutes and the certified appraisal takes 2 days, so am I to assume the certified gets someone to actually take a look at it?

What is your opinion, could I have actually found a genuine gem of a domain name for such a small price? I'd have thought that there would be some automated system out there that would have snatched up every single domain name that had a high value.

Now, IF I have actually gotten lucky here, my next question is this. Should I build it right now so it can start getting links to it, etc. and hope the value will rise for the name even further? Or are domain names like gold or any other commodity and what may be a high value today, may take a nose dive tomorrow?

Thanks for any help and advice."