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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

#51

Post by qingcharles »

player_piano wrote: post #3
KomoD wrote: post #2

> right now for example San Diego DHS is selling 26 tons of lead shot, with bidding starting at $1,000 If that's not enough for you then there's another auction too! https://www.govauctions.app/auction/gsa-4-1-QSC-I-26-226-002

It is truly a weird and wonderful world of things you can buy out there. Last year I contemplated buying a 100-tonne crane in New Jersey, which was going for about $5,000. The only issue was that you had to go pick it up yourself...

I saw someone in court getting a lengthy for stealing all the enormous counterweights from cranes and taking them for their scrap metal value. Apparently they are very expensive.

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

#52

Post by ryandrake »

player_piano wrote: post #22
showerst wrote: post #19

Feature request: Let me filter and alert based on a distance, not just sort. e.g. "Lathe" within 100 miles of Baltimore. GovDeals lets you do this, but their distance filter is very inaccurate.

You should now see this option when you create an alert - within 50/100/500 miles of a given ZIP.

Not clear where to enter the ZIP code, though. The landing page lets you select a State, but no input field for anything more narrow than that. Cool site though, I could get into it, since I love estate sales and other places to get cheap junk.

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

#53

Post by myself248 »

nodesocket wrote: post #31

The server pallet caught my attention. I wish it listed some of the basic specs, but current bid is $55. https://www.govauctions.app/auction/gsa-1-1-QSC-I-26-148-031

A lot of auctions are like that. The party making the listing has no clue about the items, and exposes themself to liability if they guess wrong, so it's better to just put no information at all.

Unlike eBay, with traditional auctions, all the responsibility for "inspection" lies on the bidder -- you're expected to visit the item during the listed inspection times, if there are any, and make your own judgment of its worth. If there's no inspection period, then you're guessing blind with everyone else.

In this case, click through to the GSA Auctions listing, and scroll down to see the "property custodian", give them a call during the hours listed above on the page, and haul your butt out there to inspect the item.

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

#57

Post by baby_souffle »

player_piano wrote: post #33
molticrystal wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Consider me a +1 for rss. That's one thing GovDeals is sorely missing.

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

#58

Post by bpavuk »

player_piano wrote: post #33
molticrystal wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

it's not so much for agents as for getting fresh deals right in your browser sidebar (Zen Browser live folders, for example) or a dedicated RSS reader app (like Newsflash)

I only read HN through Zen Browser sidebar and, rarely, Telegram at this point. everything else - friends' blogs, Codeberg/Tangled/GitHub activity - only as new tabs on the left side of the screen.

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

#59

Post by gpt5 »

player_piano wrote: post #39
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.

Indexing GovDeals is not shady. You are just providing links to their website via search. That's how Google works.
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