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Show HN: GovAuctions lets you browse government auctions at once

govauctions.app

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Re: Show HN: GovAuctions lets you browse government auctions at once

#32

Post by totallygeeky »

I like the project! Echoing that I'm seeing issues with anything from GovDeals surfacing in my area, I know there's a couple hundred auctions and only GSA Auctions came up.

Additionally, there's definitely some funkiness when it comes to how it handles current price/bid, I don't know if I saw any that were actually reporting the correct price it was currently at, always was under reported.

Thanks for sharing though, going to keep an eye on this!

Re: Show HN: GovAuctions lets you browse government auctions at once

#33

Post by player_piano »

molticrystal wrote: post #30
xnx wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I second the search parameters in URL. RSS feed of search page would also be great.

RSS Feeds of searches would be great, I know alerts exist, but for this community being able to get data through alternative methods, especially RSS is very appreciated.

Noted. Crazy that as I was building this I was wondering whether I should be designing it as much for agent browsing as for humans.

Update: search params are now passed into the URL

Re: Show HN: GovAuctions lets you browse government auctions at once

#34

Post by player_piano »

totallygeeky wrote: post #32

I like the project! Echoing that I'm seeing issues with anything from GovDeals surfacing in my area, I know there's a couple hundred auctions and only GSA Auctions came up. Additionally, there's definitely some funkiness when it comes to how it handles current price/bid, I don't know if I saw any that were actually reporting the correct price it was currently at, always was under reported. Thanks for sharing though,…

Appreciate it. Some of the bugs I have been able to fix today, but these listings actually come from diverse and in some cases hard and time-consuming to parse sources. I have no intention of scraping govdeals or anything like that, which means I have to do my own ingestion and cleaning of the data.

Re: Show HN: GovAuctions lets you browse government auctions at once

#36

Post by lazyasciiart »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #17
rurp wrote: post #16

Very interesting project! Can anyone comment on what the buying process is like? Specifically if there are any weird hoops to jump through or if it's a normal account signup and payment process. Is delivery available or do these need to be picked up in person?

The ones I’ve looked at need to be picked up in person, sometimes with very short deadlines.

e.g. from one auction: Removal Responsibilities: The successful bidder is solely responsible for all aspects of removal, including packing, crating, banding, loading, and shipping. The agency will not provide assistance.

Authorized Third-Party Removal: The authorized third-party agent must present a Letter of Authorization from the high bidder (see terms and conditions for details), a copy of the purchaser's receipt, and a valid photo ID at the time of removal.

Special Pickup Requirements: You are required to provide your last and first name along with the specific date and time to Mimi.quach@noaa.gov for pickup. This information is required to grant you access to NOAA Building 33. Building hours are Monday through Friday, 8:00 AM to 3:00 PM.

Loading Assistance: Staff will be available to help load the item onto your vehicle.

Pickup within 15 business days.

Re: Show HN: GovAuctions lets you browse government auctions at once

#37

Post by player_piano »

wiseowise wrote: post #35

That’s nice. Care to write technical write up? What’s the tech stack, expected load, are you planning to monetize it, etc.?

Happy to. This is a side-project, so I spun it up pretty quickly using Next.js and Tailwind, and it is hosted on Vercel right now.

I use a few free government APIs for the data (listed on the site, you can sign up for a key for free for all of them I think), plus a custom workflow I built that parses and ingests many other online auctions that states are mandated to make public, but which aren't part of any API or data pipeline I could find.

Expected load - about 1/10 of what it has seen today :) I had to scramble to make things more robust once this post became more popular, and am now looking at a few different options for hosting.

This was not really intended as a business - there is a very light "subscription" option right now, for users who want to create many alerts. I mainly wanted to try and fix this problem, share the solution, and get some feedback.

Re: Show HN: GovAuctions lets you browse government auctions at once

#39

Post by player_piano »

birdman3131 wrote: post #38

The title claims to search every platform but I don't see any evidence of either https://www.govdeals.com/ or https://www.publicsurplus.com/ which are probably the biggest government auction sites.

Hi, yes, my apologies. One thing I'm currently fixing is the workflow for bringing in many of the listings that sites like GovDeals cover but are not part of the available APIs. Scraping sites like GovDeals is kind of shady and not something I want to do, so I am ingesting and cleaning a lot of data from state/government websites myself. While I fix that, I've removed those references from the site.
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