I aggregated 28 US Government auction sites into one search

(bidprowl.com)

100 points | by scarsam 2 hours ago

17 comments

  • sikozu 2 minutes ago
    I'm loving how the deal of the day is a golf cart. https://bidprowl.com/deal-of-the-day/2026-04-30
  • 1970-01-01 1 hour ago
    US Gov auctions are great when you want 400 of something broken or want to travel through 3 states for a $1000 mil-spec kitchen sink.
    • 83 1 hour ago
      Or when you've been wanting to one up your neighbor's boat by buying a drug running speedboat with bullet holes.
      • cucumber3732842 1 hour ago
        Or want to get absolutely ripped off by the non-government sellers that are somehow allowed on those platforms. The whole point of Govdeals et al is that the seller is a known-ish quantity. If I wanted to roll the dice on garbage with fresh paint I'd be on Ritchie bros.

        Govdeals managed services (or whatever they call it now) is just as questionable as 3rd party sellers on any given big bog store's ecommerce "platform".

        • triceratops 9 minutes ago
          > Or want to get absolutely ripped off by the non-government sellers that are somehow allowed on those platforms

          I didn't realize the government could become Amazon.

    • SilverElfin 7 minutes ago
      Is mil spec a good thing or bad thing? It sounds good but I’m guessing you were using it sarcastically?
      • adrianpike 1 minute ago
        Depends on the item and if you and the military are optimizing for the same thing It's a lowest bidder situation, so keep that in mind.

        Mil-spec transport containers? Excellent.

        Mil-spec rucksacks? Not so excellent.

  • xnx 1 hour ago
    Clone of "GovAuctions" from 3 weeks ago? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47662945
    • player_piano 1 hour ago
      Thanks for tagging! I got a "traffic spike" notification from Hackernews for my site (https://govauctions.app) and wondered what was going on :-)
      • 83 1 hour ago
        Your site is awesome. I too am tired of checking five different government auction websites every day, each with a terrible interface from 2005.
        • player_piano 1 hour ago
          Thank you. I think the highlight so far has been one of my friends buying an industrial lathe that he found on the site!
      • rovr138 1 hour ago
        Curious, what are you using for notifications like this?
        • player_piano 1 hour ago
          I am still on Vercel (yes I know, trying to migrate off...) and it gives you automated alerts when there are anomalous traffic spikes. Funnily enough, I have had about 10 scrapers from various places scraping the site in the last week.
          • xnx 1 hour ago
            > I have had about 10 scrapers from various places scraping the site in the last week.

            I hope you're adding some fictitious entries (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_entry) to track where those scrapes might be going.

            • player_piano 1 hour ago
              This sounds like a fun Saturday morning creative writing activity - "lot of 150,000 surplus government Cybertrucks, lightly used"
          • kjs3 40 minutes ago
            Sorry to derail...but have we now collectively realized Vercel is kinda crap? I missed the memo.
  • yodon 2 hours ago
    Server load issues? Home page loads. Individual states don't seem to.
  • perdomon 27 minutes ago
    Great idea. Seems to be experiencing the hug of death at the moment, though.
  • pwr1 49 minutes ago
    Nice execution. How are you handling deduplication when the same asset shows up on multiple sites?
  • graybeardhacker 1 hour ago
    Looks like you got the Hacker News hug of death. "Oops Something went wrong

    The server is under heavy load. Please try again in a moment. "

  • DevX101 1 hour ago
    You need to cache search queries.
  • sjducb 1 hour ago
    Cool idea, I tapped the vehicles / heavy equipment tabs expecting to be taken to listings. Nothing happened. Maybe these should all take you to a page that lets you sign up to see listings?
  • bbstats 2 hours ago
    First thing I searched was Pokemon cards and found items with bids at 50% higher than market value...either shill bidding or folks who are bidding blindly.
    • reactordev 2 hours ago
      Surprised you even got it to load.
  • kdot 45 minutes ago
    Missed the District of Columbia
  • spate141 1 hour ago
    Not responding on states links. Maybe increase the cache and add another compute to server scaling
  • mintarex 30 minutes ago
    [dead]
  • Xiaoher-C 1 hour ago
    [flagged]
  • wotsdat 31 minutes ago
    [dead]
  • zikduruqe 1 hour ago
    Can I finally find a cosmoline packed Jeep in the original crate for $50? /s

    I wish I had jumped on those offers back when they were in the back of Boys Life, Popular Mechanics, and SOF magazines back in the day.

  • scarsam 2 hours ago
    [flagged]