[dead]
Show HN: GovAuctions lets you browse government auctions at once
91–100 of 101 posts
Re: Show HN: GovAuctions lets you browse government auctions at once
#92The GovDeals gap is real but honestly the core idea is solid. Bought a monitor arm through state surplus last year and the discoverability problem is brutal. Even half the sites aggregated saves hours.
I used to work for the company that owned and operated GovDeals. That was a really interesting experience. I remember one of their many companies host the listing for and processed the sale of an oil refinery (or something similar) just like something random on ebay, except this sale was many 10's of millions of dollars.
Re: Show HN: GovAuctions lets you browse government auctions at once
#93JSYK nearly all Wisconsin municipal auctions are operated by a private company, wisconsinsurplus.com. Doesn't seem like your site is pulling results from them. Very cool nonetheless.
Re: Show HN: GovAuctions lets you browse government auctions at once
#94The 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.
FWIW GovDeals does not care as long your scraping load is reasonable, at least they didn’t years ago when I asked them. They prefer personal scrapers (i.e. buyers looking for deals) stick to precise searches but they were okay with properly throttled site wide scraping if its a public site.
They make money not by optimizing per item profit or by exploiting information asymmetry, but by getting as many eyeballs on their site as possible to drive demand (and thus drive auction price up). They’re happy to be scraped as long as scrapers don’t bring them down because their core competency is giving municipal and state governments an aggregated platform and making the process easier from a bureaucratic point of view.
If you do the work of marketing for them (especially for free!) that’s a plus in their eyes. You’re not a competitor because they do the work of actually dealing with government departments like handling payments and paperwork.
Re: Show HN: GovAuctions lets you browse government auctions at once
#95I'm getting only Wisconsin no matter what state I choose. I have not created an account yet, would that make it actually work?
Re: Show HN: GovAuctions lets you browse government auctions at once
#96I'm getting only Wisconsin no matter what state I choose. I have not created an account yet, would that make it actually work?
I'm having a hard time replicating this bug - if there's any more detail you can share (you can also share via the about page on the site) I will take a look.
Re: Show HN: GovAuctions lets you browse government auctions at once
#97I'm getting only Wisconsin no matter what state I choose. I have not created an account yet, would that make it actually work?
I'm having a hard time replicating this bug - if there's any more detail you can share (you can also share via the about page on the site) I will take a look.
Tried again and it's showing my state. Thank you for looking.
Re: Show HN: GovAuctions lets you browse government auctions at once
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
this is a fascinating example of how I'm interested in what any of this meant, but not interested enough to look it up, bravo!
why did you feel the need to say this?
the substantive nature of the comment is regarding overuse of niche terms and acronyms without defining them, in a forum not related to those things
how it would be poorer signal and even less substantive to have a subthread of people asking about what it means, some respondents saying just look it up and more, all when the parent poster could say what they are
Re: Show HN: GovAuctions lets you browse government auctions at once
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
why did you feel the need to say this?
the substantive nature of the comment is regarding overuse of niche terms and acronyms without defining them, in a forum not related to those things how it would be poorer signal and even less substantive to have a subthread of people asking about what it means, some respondents saying just look it up and more, all when the parent poster could say what they are
yeah makes sense to be honest
Re: Show HN: GovAuctions lets you browse government auctions at once
#100The real estate up for auction is actually insane. My conception of a "HUD home" is completely shattered.