Thanks, Michael.
1. No it's not worth that money. I can easily make up a different word for the cost of a couple of beers.
2. The registrar is Public Domain Registry (.com) which is a kind of "wholesale" registrar to customer-facing resellers like the outfit I described. So all the forwarding, locking, private registration, and auto-renewal, etc. (I assume) is handled by the reseller's own little control panel system that they offer to their domain/hosting customers.
I totally expect it to be auto-renewed for a year or two. But maybe they'll part with the .net domain (which they also squatted on).
I once acquired another domain from Name Scout (.ca) in a post-expiration instant auction, and it did cost about $55 (there were no other bidders).