In the early days, and I don't recall if 1994 was within this range, domains were free. You filled out the email form and sent it off. If you had a valid handle (remember those? Two initials and your duplicate count?), and nobody else had the domain spoken for, it was yours.

This is why we old timers kick ourselves over skipping the land rush.

In 1994, .com domains were free. They didn't charge for .com domains until several years after this.

When they changed to a fee-based model, Network Solutions inherited the mgmt contract from InterNIC and charged $50/yr at first and then lowered the price to $35 (which then was lowered again when multiple registrars were allowed access to the NIC db).

I missed the chance to grab steve.org, which was free at the time I first checked. A short while later I grabbed steve.org.uk which I used everafter - and it cost me $75 for the registration at that time, via register.com