[HN Gopher] Show HN: GovAuctions lets you browse government auct...
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Show HN: GovAuctions lets you browse government auctions at once
I've long been into finding deals on government auction sites
(seizures, surplus sales etc.) - right now for example San Diego
DHS is selling 26 tons of lead shot, with bidding starting at
$1,000 -\\_(tsu)_/- It has historically been extremely tedious
though: scanning dozens of janky sites which have interminable page
loading times; back buttons take you all the way back to the
homepage etc. The site I built - GovAuctions - lets you search
every government surplus auction at once. You can filter by
location, category, and price, save items to a watchlist, and get
alerts when new auctions match what you're looking for. Let me
know what you think, if you have any suggestions, and if you find
any deals in your area!
Author : player_piano
Score : 168 points
Date : 2026-04-06 16:21 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.govauctions.app)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.govauctions.app)
| KomoD wrote:
| > 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
| player_piano wrote:
| 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...
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I am looking for a 60 ft+ steel ship if you come across one.
| player_piano wrote:
| There is a 25ft one currently at $1,550 in Montana, made
| from steel and comes with its own trailer! - https://www.go
| vauctions.app/auction/gsa-3-1-QSC-I-26-284-021
| qingcharles wrote:
| 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.
| dlcarrier wrote:
| If you want to see how quickly this can trap you in, watch the
| William Osman 2 channel on YouTube.
| player_piano wrote:
| Will check it out once I fix a bunch the bugs people are
| surfacing :-)
| atentaten wrote:
| What does this mean?
| carefree-bob wrote:
| This is a real public service. More people can find better deals,
| this increases the pool of bidders, taxpayers will get more money
| for the auction. Discoverability is hugely important to these
| auctions.
| player_piano wrote:
| Thank you. Yes, you could definitely say that I'm undermining a
| personal arbitrage advantage on this corner of the Internet,
| but I couldn't resist trying to "fix" it and better surface all
| of these woefully inefficient mini-marketplaces.
| BloondAndDoom wrote:
| Good stuff,
|
| Once an item clicked back button returns you to a reset listing,
| so you cannot click and item go back and retain the last position
| you were looking at (tested on iPhone)
| player_piano wrote:
| Update: this should be working now.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Seems to be missing stuff.
|
| I searched "volkswagen" on govdeals and found a lot of vehicles
| listed but nothing on this site.
| player_piano wrote:
| Thank you. Looks like other people are having an issue finding
| these - I'm going to take the reference to these listings down
| until I can fix it.
| gnopgnip wrote:
| The guides mention govdeals. But I don't see them, for instance
| the UC davis bike auctions are not included.
| player_piano wrote:
| Thanks. Looks like there is an issue with these listings right
| now - working on it.
| rurp wrote:
| 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?
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| The ones I've looked at need to be picked up in person,
| sometimes with very short deadlines.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| 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.
| player_piano wrote:
| It varies by state and authority. The majority require in-
| person pickup; for properties there is often longer, sometimes
| multi-stage bidding process (where the auctioneer periodically
| reviews current bids, and decides whether any are acceptable
| before moving to the next stage).
| showerst wrote:
| 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.
| player_piano wrote:
| You should now see this option when you create an alert -
| within 50/100/500 miles of a given ZIP.
| ryandrake wrote:
| 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.
| RationPhantoms wrote:
| Doesn't seem accurate considering GovDeals has auctions in NY, NJ
| and CT listed but your website has nothing.
| player_piano wrote:
| Yes, there's an issue with some of the auctions that are on
| GovDeals - I've removed all the references to those while I try
| and fix them.
| venusenvy47 wrote:
| Pretty cool. But a lot of it doesn't really work once you click
| into a particular state. For example, from this page, if you
| click on "All auctions in Georgia", it lists all auctions in the
| country. Or if you click on "electronics", it doesn't show just
| electronics in Georgia.
|
| https://www.govauctions.app/auctions/georgia
| player_piano wrote:
| Thanks for surfacing this. Not sure why this is breaking, but I
| am looking into it and will fix it as soon as I can.
|
| Update: This should now be working the intended way (ie for
| Georgia, showing only GA results when you click out, and
| filtering for the category within GA).
| molticrystal wrote:
| Suggestions:
|
| Put the parameters into the url so searches can be bookmarked,
| like zip codes, terms, filters, and other aspects can be shared
| easily as well.
|
| Description search both include (like i7, 16GB) which is good for
| electronics and exclude for example exclude "repair" or "needs
| repair" which is helpful for many things.
|
| Category specific filters, vehicle millage range, year
|
| Keywords classification filters like pickup, delivery, payment
| methods, how many days you have to pay if known, etc.
|
| You are probably already thinking along these lines for some of
| them, just an encouragement to implement. Yes
| categorization/filters can be fuzzy(commas, which word or plurals
| used, etc), so feel free to put the [beta] or [experimental] tag
| until a recipe that gets most of the stuff works.
|
| Thanks for building this, I bookmarked it and already shared it
| with a few friends.
| player_piano wrote:
| Very kind of you - sharing this has definitely highlighted some
| of the rough edges :) Search / Alert accuracy is one big thing
| I need to make better, and I will take note of these
| suggestions.
| xnx wrote:
| I second the search parameters in URL. RSS feed of search page
| would also be great.
| molticrystal wrote:
| 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.
| player_piano wrote:
| 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
| baby_souffle wrote:
| Consider me a +1 for rss. That's one thing GovDeals is
| sorely missing.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| @dang player_piano is obviously a bot.
| player_piano wrote:
| Hi, I am not a bot, and if you ask me to write a poem or sonnet
| about Hackernews in the reponses I assure you I will not be up
| to the task.
| nodesocket wrote:
| 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
| myself248 wrote:
| 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.
| totallygeeky wrote:
| 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!
| player_piano wrote:
| 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.
| wiseowise wrote:
| That's nice. Care to write technical write up? What's the tech
| stack, expected load, are you planning to monetize it, etc.?
| player_piano wrote:
| 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.
| birdman3131 wrote:
| 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.
| player_piano wrote:
| 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.
| rickcarlino wrote:
| What is the catch with these real estate auctions? Certainly a
| $60k house is a deal even if it had a bad roof full of asbestos.
| player_piano wrote:
| Can't speak for every listing on here, but depending on the
| state and type of auction there can be lots of issues that you
| have to be aware of, like physical issues with the property
| itself, liens on the property, and even potentially people
| occupying the property who may have defaulted through things
| like not paying their property tax, but not yet left after the
| state has technically 'seized' it.
| qingcharles wrote:
| Where do you live? You can buy reasonably crappy houses all
| over the USA in rural areas for $5K, $10K all day.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| [Some] data seems to be wrong/stale, eg your website says no bids
| here, but underlying gov auction site lists a bid:
|
| https://www.govauctions.app/auction/gsa-4-1-QSC-I-26-240-001
| player_piano wrote:
| Will look into this, I have seen some issues where the API data
| is not reflective of the current bid status.
| _whiteCaps_ wrote:
| Government auctions are interesting. Not a lot of information on
| pricing.
|
| My dad bid on multiple LCVPs, guessing on a reasonable price for
| them based on what the engines were worth.
|
| Fortunately he only won one of them. If all 4 had shown up at our
| house, my mom would have killed him.
|
| Interesting aside, the casting date on the transmission housing
| was 1945 - but the hulls were built in 1967. Those Detroit Diesel
| 6-71s engines / transmissions last a long time!
| swalsh wrote:
| I had no idea one could buy a Blackhawk for $1.5M
| player_piano wrote:
| It's the fuel cost that gets you...
| joncrane wrote:
| There are Chinooks with no bids as of yet....as well as a
| Bombardier Challenger
| xur17 wrote:
| Thanks for building this!
|
| Feature request: I'd love to be able to share a search results
| page with a friend. If you update the url to include the location
| or zip code I am searching for (ex:
| https://www.govauctions.app/feed/12345) this would be possible.
| player_piano wrote:
| I believe this should now be working. Thanks for the
| suggestion.
| xur17 wrote:
| Thank you! Just realized someone else recommended this a hour
| ago as well, oops.
| enahs-sf wrote:
| definitely getting updates on your searches would be cool.
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(page generated 2026-04-06 23:00 UTC)