U.S. Federal Surplus & Industrial Auction Listings

Find actionable surplus opportunities in seconds

Monitor normalized U.S. federal surplus and industrial-equipment auction lots from the documented GSA Auctions API. Quickly identify equipment type, sale and lot IDs, auction timing, geography, agencies, reserve amounts, current high bids, and official detail links—without manually searching auction pages.

Unofficial product; not affiliated with or endorsed by GSA.

What you can do

• Find excavators, forklifts, generators, CNC equipment, vehicles, and other federal surplus assets.
• Filter results locally by keyword, state, auction status, and maximum result count.
• Compare reserve and current high-bid signals for acquisition research.
• Build repeat-use feeds for equipment dealers, resellers, liquidation buyers, contractors, and market-intelligence teams.

Sample output

{
  "saleNo": "SYN-1001",
  "lotNo": "12",
  "itemName": "Tracked Excavator",
  "auctionStatus": "A",
  "auctionEndDate": "2026-10-08",
  "propertyLocation": {"city": "Denver", "state": "CO", "zipCode": "80202"},
  "reserve": 25000,
  "highBidAmount": 18750,
  "itemDescriptionUrl": "https://www.gsa.gov/"
}

Quick start

1. Provide a valid api.data.gov developer key through the Actor's protected runtime configuration.
2. Optionally enter query, state, or status.
3. Set maxResults and run the Actor.
4. Read the normalized rows from the default dataset.

API and MCP examples

API input:

{"query":"excavator","state":"CO","status":"A","maxResults":10}

MCP-style call:

{"tool":"us-federal-surplus-industrial-auctions","arguments":{"query":"generator","maxResults":25}}

Pricing and value

The value is in reducing repeated manual monitoring of a live public auction feed. Dealers and research teams can use normalized identifiers, dates, locations, bid signals, and official links in downstream workflows instead of copying data from individual listings. Usage costs depend on your Apify plan and run volume.

Inputs

• Keyword: optional local match for item names and descriptions.
• State: optional two-letter property or sale-location state.
• Auction status: optional documented status code such as A or P.
• Maximum results: 1 to 1,000,000; default 100.

Outputs

Each dataset row contains sale and lot identifiers, item name, auction dates and status, property and sale locations, reserve, high bid, bid increment, agency, bureau, and the official item-description URL. Contracting-officer contacts, images, and long copied descriptions are intentionally excluded.

Source, license, and limitations

Source: GSA Auctions API, https://api.gsa.gov/assets/gsaauctions/v2/auctions. GSA and Data.gov describe it as a public JSON API covering GSA Auctions and participating federal-agency assets. Data.gov lists the dataset under CC0 1.0; third-party media and descriptive material may have separate rights. This Actor returns normalized factual data and official links, not third-party media. Coverage is federal surplus participating in GSA Auctions, not the entire commercial auction market. Do not use GSA seals or branding to imply endorsement.

The documented service limits are 5 calls per 5 seconds and 5,000 calls per day. The Actor downloads the documented dataset once per run and filters locally.

Troubleshooting

• Authentication: confirm the protected runtime key is valid and enabled for the Auctions API.
• Rate limit: wait and retry later if the service reports a limit response.
• Empty data: broaden the keyword, remove the state/status filter, and verify that the upstream dataset currently contains matching rows.
• Schema drift: report changes if expected auction identifiers or arrays are no longer present.
• Upstream outage: retry after the official API becomes available.

Store publication requires manual approval.