I asked for advice both from people I knew and online in various forums, and got some interesting responses.  I got the following advice from users on a domaintools.com forum for which I'm quite grateful:

table dot com is a very strong domain name.

Although it's not the plural that most people would type in, it is still a domain that has a high monetization value and probably gets a decent amount of direct navigation (people just typing in table.com) traffic.

There are lots of advertisers paying for ads for the table keyword, so the domain can easily be monetized.

If your domain doesn't make it in this auction, I would contact moniker.com and see if they would be interested in including it in one of their upcoming auctions.

I think you would get some serious bids for your domain. Especially if you could provide some traffic stats to potential buyers.

- circler

and

First, let me congratulate you on working and/or owning a company that had the foresight to register such an impressive generic when they were freely available - that's always a good sign in my book.

-gepp

and

I think a $50,000 reserve on table.com would be considered a VERY VERY low reserve.

I'm definitely not an official domain appraiser or anything, but just looking at the current list for comparable domain names (and looking at recent sales for one word marketable domains), you can get an idea of the domains potential worth to the right buyer (a seller of tables).

To me, $100,000 would be a LOW reserve for table.com, $250,000 would be a reasonable reserve, $500,000 would be a possible reserve (but might get less bids), $1,000,000 would be a high reserve.

Again, I'm just playing armchair appraiser here, but table.com has a definite high resale value.

To the right end user buyer, it might go high 6 figures (possibly seven), to an investor, maybe low 6 figures.

- circler

and

As it was pointed out, Tables.com would be better. I think $50,000 is a healthy reserve.

- Jay

and

Table.com! I totally agree with circler. You have a piece of cyber real-estate on the prime waterfront of the Internet! $250,000 at the LOWEST for that reserve, I would think. But again, I am no expert appraiser, either. In fact, I don't put a lot of value into the paid or unpaid appraisals anyway, as they do not seem to go along with what always sells at a higher value! At any rate, you have a great name and I hope you do well with it!

- bobbyd43

I also posted a request to Digital Point's Appraisals forum, which appears to be a great site for getting some knowledgeable people to eyeball your domains, but I didn't get any responses, other than a couple of further inquiries about selling the domain.