Most of the real money will come from domains that you've held for a very long time, probably 5+ years.
Domain investing is never going to be a Get Rich Quick scheme, as the ROI can take forever, and due to many of your bets never panning out, for many it's going to be a Get Poor Slow experience.
Generally older domains sell for higher prices, because higher quality domains were registered longer ago. Are there exceptions? Sure, new words and terms emerge all the time, and newer extensions like .ai can get hot. Also it is not that unusual to register a domain and get an offer within a year - now it may be an $xxx offer but still I wouldn't say that's unusual.
My only 6 figure sale came from a .ca hand reg in the mid 2010's that I couldn't believe was available to hand reg. I think it might have been a domain that was taken from a non-Canadian presence registrant by CIRA and released back in the pool, and I just happened to have good timing. No other way I can explain it, unless it slipped through a TBR while everyone was sleeping. WIthin a few years I sold it after a company inquired about it. Have had several low 5 figure sales and many 4 figure sales over the years, and most of those were hand regs. Sometimes you see some close out sales here on .ca's that people are going to let drop, I have bought from those in the past and usually there are domains in there that 'could' sell for much higher with the right buyer and situation.
If I was going to focus on something, it would not be how old the domains are, it would be what is selling. Go through all the domain sales reports you can every week and you get an idea of what words, terms, extensions are hot. Which might make you wonder why we are all still here investing in .ca's! lol
Go through all the domain sales reports you can every week and you get an idea of what words, terms, extensions are hot. Which might make you wonder why we are all still here investing in .ca's! lol
I was just going to say that - if you go through the sales charts to determine what to buy, probably the last extension you'll look at is .CA.
Not that you can't make a sale, it's just a very tough market populated by cheapskates who don't or can't see the value in a domain. All you can do it keep throwing that spaghetti on the wall and hope you get lucky and something sticks.