I'm big on quality myself and now have a dozen $XXXX LLLL.com purchases in my collection. I see a name like my recent acquisition of DDDO.com as being exponentially better than ZXQJ.com, the same goes for AAAS.com which I've place a bid on.
AAAS seems to be an excellent typo of AAA for starters, it can also stand for triple A's, Triple A-S, ... There's plenty of potential endusers for this one clearly and it has a very healthy Wordtracker.
I see DDDO as one of the best alternatives for an enduser that has the acronym DDD when DDD.com is clearly not available (already owned by an enduser).
Something like "DDD Online" makes sense to me. For that same reason, I've picked up some quad premiums ending in "I" which could stand for "LLL.com" Inc in example. I firmly believe that there's a safe way to invest in LLLL.coms (eg. what I'm now doing) and then there's a not so safe way.
Sure bad letter LLLL.coms may pay better long term, but considering the considerably greater risk you're taking... You better expect one hell of alot better of a return. A name like AAAS will forever have potential, regardless of what happens in the 4 letter market.. Something like ZXQJ may share a different fate imho.
One thing I'd like to point out too about that "1/26th the value of an LLL.com rule" that we see several people mentioning now... I ask you where else does this apply in the domain market.
Does a CVCVC fetch 1/26th of what a CVCV fetches? How about a VCVCV? An NNNN.com fetches more like 1/20th what an NNN.com fetches, not 1/10th.
Some things to consider when evaluating an LLLL.com:
1. Endusers
2. Likelihood of Future Endusers (eg. ability to create meaningful acronyms from the letters)
3. Traffic/Revenue
4. Brandability/Pronounceability
I've found that Estibot happens to do a surprisingly good job at telling you what non-pronounceable LLLL.coms are crap versus okay. Give it a try...
Talking about China, India, the future, etc are largely irrelevant imho... We can't predict the future just like how 99% of people didn't see this subprime crisis happening 5 years ago. If we can't predict what's going to happen 5 years from now, how the hell can we predict something 10, 20, 30 years away? How many people are interested in holding their LLLL.com for 10 years until some Chinese enduser comes along?
Regardless of what people want to believe, the U.S.A. still is "The World" when it comes to online dollars. I've sold more domains to American domainers than every other country in the world combined and I don't think I'm alone there...
If you start investing in names that not only Americans, but also Canadians, Europeans, etc don't like (eg, names like ZXQJ), you're limiting yourself largely to endusers from developing countries...
Nominal GDP per capita in China is about $2000 USD/year, about $1100 in India. There might be alot of people in both but there sure aren't alot of people that are going to spend $100+ on a name like ZXQJ when they can have ZXQJX for $7 and has about as much meaning to the rest of the world as ZXQJ ever had...
Triple premium LLLL.coms have a very bright future imho... You can make alot of meaningful acronyms out of a name with a single Q or Y, but start getting 2 or 3 crap letters like that in the same LLLL.com and most domainers will ask you wtf it could possibly stand for -- and rightfully so!
Will the rest largely be "domainer tokens"? I sure see them being that way for at least the forseeable future, with the odd enduser sale here and there. Perhaps there will be enough high dollar enduser sales (or hype) to push their prices higher, but I think it'll be a long time before even a meaningful percentage of names like ZXQJ find themselves in the hands of endusers.
I have to side with some of the veteran DNF'ers here... Quality is the way to go in this market. Long term, it's the only way to guarantee yourself you don't get bit in the ***.