What is for sale, where, and what it went for.
53 US Auctions tools behind one URL.
96% correct, where web search got 49%
Live lots from roughly 1,900 US auction houses alongside federal, state and county surplus, seized and tax-deed sales. Search by keyword, by state, or by distance from a ZIP. And because we never delete a lot when it closes, you can also ask the question no auction site can answer: what did one of these actually sell for.
The part no auction site offers
An auction site's job ends when the gavel falls. The lot comes down, and the price it fetched goes with it — which is why "what is this worth at auction" is such a hard question to answer honestly, even though thousands of comparable items sell every week.
Pipeworx never deletes a closed lot. Sold prices accumulate instead, so us_auctions_sold_comps can hand back the min, median, average and max a thing has actually realized, with recent examples — a comp set built from hammer prices rather than asking prices.
Included Packs
The whole index — lot search with full-text and radius filters, closing-soon, the sale calendar, the auction-house directory, sold comps, and a live coverage report
The government half on its own, when surplus, seized and tax-deed lots are all you want and estate sales would be noise
Federal surplus straight from the live GSA Auctions API — vehicles, aircraft parts, office and lab equipment
The buy side. Open solicitations from government purchasing portals — usually the same person's job as tracking what those agencies are selling off
ZIP lookup and point-to-point distance, for turning "near me" into something an agent can actually filter on
Where the lots come from
Most auction platforms publish no API at all, so each source is swept on a schedule and normalized into one shape before the tools ever see it. Commercial sources re-sweep every six hours, government sources daily. us_auctions_coverage returns the live per-source counts and the last refresh time for each.
Commercial ~1,900 houses
hibidHiBid — the marketplace most independent US auctioneers publish to. Industrial liquidations and plant teardowns through to estate and collectible sales, with the selling house named on every lotGovernment 6 sources
govdealsState and local government surplus — the largest public-sector source, vehicles through heavy equipment and real estateallsurplusBusiness and government surplus. Also serves govliquidation.com and go-dove.com, which are the same catalogue under different domainspublicsurplusAgency surplus across 29 categories — motor pool, heavy equipment, medical, aviation, marinebid4assetsCounty tax-foreclosure and sheriff sales, listed as auction events by countyirsIRS seized and forfeited propertytxauctionGaston & Sheehan — the contractor that runs US Marshals and other federal seized-property salesWhat is deliberately absent
proxibid · bidspotterBehind bot-detection that blocks automated access outright. We index what we can reach without evading a blockritchie bros · liveauctioneersBoth disallow their search APIs in robots.txt. That is a stated wish, and we honour itmanheim · auctionaccessWholesale vehicle channels requiring a dealer licence — closed to any public index, ours includedSetup
Choose one of these options:
Add this to your claude_desktop_config.json:
{
"mcpServers": {
"pipeworx-us-auctions": {
"command": "npx",
"args": [
"-y",
"mcp-remote",
"https://gateway.pipeworx.io/mcp?vertical=us-auctions",
"--header",
"Authorization:Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"
]
}
}
}Paste this into Claude to use for one conversation:
Use this MCP server for this conversation:
npx -y mcp-remote "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/mcp?vertical=us-auctions" --header "Authorization:Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"
Then find forklifts up for auction within 100 miles of 94402, and tell me what forklifts have actually been selling for.Every source is a public listing surface we index ourselves. Sign up and connect — no external keys required.
Common questions
What does US Auctions cover?
Live lots from both halves of the American auction market. Commercial: HiBid, the marketplace roughly 1,900 US auction houses publish to — industrial liquidations, plant teardowns, heavy equipment, estate and collectible sales. Government: GovDeals and AllSurplus (state and local surplus, and the same catalogue behind govliquidation.com and go-dove.com), PublicSurplus, Bid4Assets county tax and sheriff sales, IRS seized property, and the US Marshals' contractor. Call us_auctions_coverage for the current per-source counts and how recently each refreshed.
Can I find out what things actually sold for?
Yes, and this is the part no upstream site offers. Auction sites delete a lot once it closes, so the hammer price disappears with it. Pipeworx never deletes a closed lot, so sold prices accumulate. us_auctions_sold_comps returns min, median, average and max realized price for anything matching your search, plus recent examples — the comp set for 'what does a used forklift actually fetch at auction' rather than what someone is asking for one.
Can I search by location?
Yes. Pass near_zip and radius_miles to us_auctions_search or us_auctions_closing_soon and results come back ordered by distance. Positions come from ZIP centroids, so distance is town-level rather than street-level, and every response says so. You can also filter by state, or use us_auction_events to see which sales are happening in a state on which dates.
How fresh is it?
Commercial sources are re-swept every six hours and government sources daily, so bids and close times move with the market rather than sitting at a morning snapshot. Individual lot close times are exact instants. Sale-level dates are the calendar date in the auctioneer's own local time, because that is what upstream publishes — it does not give a timezone, and we would rather report a true date than a guessed timestamp.
Why are some big auction sites missing?
Proxibid, BidSpotter, Ritchie Bros and LiveAuctioneers are not included. The first two sit behind bot-detection that blocks automated access outright; the latter two disallow their search APIs in robots.txt. We index sources we can reach without evading a block or ignoring a stated wish. Manheim and AuctionAccess are wholesale channels that require a dealer licence, so they are closed to any public index.