SCOTLAND will go on sale at an auction in New York with a price tag of offers over £2 million, The Scotsman can reveal.
But it is not the whole country up for grabs - just the internet domain name of scotland.com.
Chris Leggat, of the United States-based company moniker. com, which acts as an internet name broker, said the name would go up for sale at a major conference for domain owners in New York this month.
Mr Leggatt - whose father emigrated to America from Glasgow - said: "There is only one Scotland, so that makes scotland.com extremely valuable." The site is owned by a Seattle firm, which registered it in 1995 for what could have been as little as £75. Mr Leggatt said the site featured some tourist content, but the domain was under-utilised, although it still attracts a million hits a month.
"It was bought purely for commercial reasons and has enormous potential," he said. "Scotland is a great place and people want to know about it. I would like it to come back to Scotland."
Although the auction is being held in New York, bids will be accepted from all over the world.
Struan Robertson, a technology law expert with Pinsent Mason in Glasgow, said: "This is a huge business, but the people who are active in these kind of sales tend to be professionals.
"Their business is buying and selling these names and using the names they hold to generate advertising income."
Mr Robertson said that some domain names had raised huge sums for their owners. He doubted that scotland.com would attract multi-million dollar bids, but said it "should certainly get into six figures".
