Yahoo Auctions Japan Scraper — Used Item Price Research & Resale Sourcing

🔌 Live API here: Apify Actor: Japan Yahoo Auctions Prices — Listings & Market Data — run from any language, no setup. Pay-per-result. Also available via Apify MCP for AI agents.

Scrape Yahoo! Auctions Japan (auctions.yahoo.co.jp) by keyword — or by multiple keywords at once — and get structured price / bid / availability data for JDM used items. Built for reseller sourcing, price arbitrage, and market monitoring.

Output Sample

{
  "itemId": "u1240525087",
  "title": "中古美品 a7iv ボディ ILCE-7M4",
  "currentPrice": 196500,
  "buyNowPrice": null,
  "bidCount": 9,
  "timeLeft": "5時間",
  "postage": "＋送料810円",
  "imageUrl": "https://auc-pctr.c.yimg.jp/...",
  "detailUrl": "https://auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/u1240525087",
  "source": "yahoo_auctions",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-08-17T08:50:42Z"
}

What You Can Build With This

• Resaler sourcing — keyword lists for whole product categories in one run. bidCount flags high-demand items; low buyNowPrice marks buyable sourcing candidates.
• Price arbitrage — compare Yahoo Auctions buy-now prices against Mercari / Amazon market rates (scrape the other side separately) to spot margin.
• Price monitoring — schedule daily/hourly runs to track JDM used-item market movement over time.
• Market research — snapshot what Japanese auction sellers are listing and at what price.

Input

Field	Type	Description	Default
searchKeywords	array	List of keywords, each searched independently and combined into one dataset. Use for multi-category research.	—
searchKeyword	string	Single keyword (backward compatible; ignored if searchKeywords is set).	—
maxItems	integer	Max total items across all keywords.	100
maxPages	integer	Max result pages fetched per keyword.	5
webhookUrl	string	Optional. POST a JSON summary to this URL on completion (Slack / Discord / n8n / Zapier).	""
proxyConfiguration	object	Optional Apify proxy configuration.	—

At least one keyword (searchKeywords or searchKeyword) is required.

Pricing

• Actors charge $0.00005 per run (Actor Start) + $0.002 per dataset item.
• A typical 100-item single-keyword run costs ~$0.20 total.
• Every result returns 11 fields (item id, title, both prices, bid count, time left, postage, image, URL, source, timestamp) — no hidden charges.

Limitations

• Scrapes Yahoo! Auctions search results (public listing pages). Login-gated data and sellers' private information are not collected.
• The site is not rate-limit-free — keep maxPages modest for frequent scheduled runs.
• Prices are live at scrape time; fixed-price buy-now listings are returned as-is.

FAQ

How fresh is the data? As fresh as the moment of the run — each record is timestamped with scrapedAt.

Can I run this daily on a schedule? Yes — use the Schedule tab in the Apify console to run it hourly/daily, ideal for price tracking dashboards.

Can a keyword return zero items? Yes, if nothing currently matches. The actor reports what it finds; missing keywords simply contribute no rows.

Is there a related actor for the buy-side marketplace? This covers auctions side. Pair it with a Mercari / e-commerce scraper if you need cross-market arbitrage.

Integrations

This actor supports Apify MCP Connectors — send run results to Slack, Notion, Supabase, or GitHub without sharing credentials. Look for the Connectors tab on the run screen.

You can also receive a JSON completion summary at any URL by passing a webhookUrl in the input — useful with Slack, Discord, n8n, or Zapier.

Example: Post Results to Slack (Webhook)

1. Create a Slack webhook: https://api.slack.com/apps → Create New App → Incoming Webhooks.
2. Copy the Webhook URL and pass it as webhookUrl when running the actor.
3. On completion the actor POSTs {"event":"actor_completed","itemCount":N,"keywords":[...],"datasetUrl":"..."} to your Slack channel.

Example: Scheduled Price Alerts to Slack

1. Run the actor once. On the run screen, open the Connectors tab and connect Slack (one-time authorization).
2. Go to the Schedule tab → create a daily schedule.
3. Set searchKeywords to your watchlist.
4. Each scheduled run delivers a fresh price snapshot for your categories to Slack automatically.

Scheduled Multi-Category Research

1. Schedule tab → create a daily/hourly schedule.
2. Set searchKeywords (["SONY α7 IV", "POKEMON カード 未開封", "PS5 中古"]) for cross-category sourcing research.
3. Combine maxItems to cap total collection volume per run.

Changelog

• 2026-08-17 — Added searchKeywords (multi-keyword) support for cross-category resale research; fixed maxItems cap across keywords. Added webhook delivery. Optimized Store SEO. Added local resale-research tool & cross-market margin analyzer.
• 2026-08-13 — Initial release.

Technical Details

• httpx async HTTP with 3 retries on 429/5xx.
• BeautifulSoup (lxml) parsing.
• Sequential keyword search on a shared client (gentle on rate limits).
• Runs on Apify's apify/actor-python:3.12 image.

Local Resale Research & Margin Analysis (self-use)

Two companion scripts under research/ build the resale pipeline locally (Japan IP):

# 1. Daily research over a watchlist -> flags high-demand (bid>=5) & sourcing
#    candidates, writes timestamped JSON+CSV to data/research/
python3 -m research.research_locally --config research/watchlist.json
python3 -m research.research_locally --keywords "SONY α7 IV" --keywords "POKEMON カード"

# 2. Cross-market margin: Yahoo sourcing vs Suruga-ya / Mercari resale prices
#    Add --mercari to also pull Mercari asking prices (Apify sync API, no local
#    Chrome needed). Tag each resale JSON/keyword so it only matches same-keyword
#    candidates; require matching SKU (ILCE-xxx) to avoid cross-model hits.
APIFY_TOKEN=... python3 -m research.margin_analyzer \
  --yahoo data/research/items_YYYYMMDD.csv \
  --suruga "SONY α7 IV=/path/to/suruga.json" \
  --min-margin-rate 0.20

# 3. One-command pipeline: Yahoo sourcing + Suruga-ya + Mercari -> daily report
APIFY_TOKEN=... python3 -m research.integrated_pipeline \
  --config research/watchlist.json --out data/research/daily --mercari

The analyzer is advisory only — it never places orders. Real resale is always manual (fees: Yahoo 8.8% + shipping, Mercari 10%; returns/fakes risk apply).