Auction Watch

Boise-metro police and government surplus auctions run deep — the Boise PD auction alone regularly has dozens of lots, and that’s before Ada County, Canyon County, Meridian, and Nampa get counted. Grandpa already runs the Meridian-area circuit in person; this casts a wider net across the Treasure Valley and does the boring part — reading every lot’s fine print — automatically.

The page below is split in two: Vehicles first — every car, truck, or motorcycle lot found, across every platform and agency, for Grandpa to check — then everything else, grouped by category. That second half is the actual point of automating this: tools, electronics, jewelry, unclaimed property, the stuff a casual bidder scrolls past because it’s buried on page 6 of a listing site. Those are exactly the lots most likely to be overlooked and undervalued.

Grandpa also fixes small engines and appliances — mostly vacuums — so that category gets its own dedicated feed too: Grandpa’s Shop.

Everything below re-derives from scripts/auction_finder.py (pulls lots) and scripts/auction_value.py (estimates resale value with Claude and scores the gap against the current bid). See docs/AUCTION-MONITORING.md for how it’s wired up, what it’s watching, and its known rough edges.