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 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 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!
Discussion Highlights (20 comments)
KomoD
> 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
dlcarrier
If you want to see how quickly this can trap you in, watch the William Osman 2 channel on YouTube.
carefree-bob
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.
BloondAndDoom
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)
SoftTalker
Seems to be missing stuff. I searched "volkswagen" on govdeals and found a lot of vehicles listed but nothing on this site.
gnopgnip
The guides mention govdeals. But I don't see them, for instance the UC davis bike auctions are not included.
rurp
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?
showerst
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.
RationPhantoms
Doesn't seem accurate considering GovDeals has auctions in NY, NJ and CT listed but your website has nothing.
venusenvy47
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
molticrystal
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.
doctorpangloss
@dang player_piano is obviously a bot.
nodesocket
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
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!
wiseowise
That’s nice. Care to write technical write up? What’s the tech stack, expected load, are you planning to monetize it, etc.?
birdman3131
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.
rickcarlino
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.
dmitrygr
[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
_whiteCaps_
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
I had no idea one could buy a Blackhawk for $1.5M