This might be somewhat of a newbie question but hopefully someone can answer this. I have seen many different domain names listed for sky high prices, so I decided to check out a few of them and I can't figure out why they are worth so much. There are no sites being hosted on them (other than a general ads page), they have no real traffic and the actual names aren't even that catchy.

It would make sense if the domain had a lot of traffic or even if the domain name was something very unique like "freebies.com" but how do people come up with these prices ranging anywhere from $300 to $30,000?

Common-sense would suggest that if someone really wanted a domain like "freedrinks.com" they would try other variations and put the "$30,000" into the developing the site or advertising instead.

Is it just a case of companies buying up domain names, sticking silly prices on them and hoping some corporate giant with a big budget is going to take a shine to one of there "premium" names and buy it or is there something more to it than that?