🔨 Purple Wave Auctions Scraper

🚀 Export Purple Wave auction lots in seconds. Paste an auction, a lot or a search URL and get every lot as a flat 51-field row: photo, make, model, year, hours, mileage, serial or VIN, live bid or final sold price, seller location and the exact closing time. A five-lot verification run finished in under 10 seconds on 1 GB of memory.

Purple Wave is one of the largest no-reserve online auction houses in the United States, selling farm machinery, construction equipment, trucks and trailers in weekly timed auctions. Every lot sells regardless of price, so its results are a clean price signal for used iron. This Actor reads the same JSON the purplewave.com site itself renders, so you get the numbers a bidder sees, not a guess parsed out of HTML.

Coverage is large in both directions. At verification time there were about 3,900 open lots across 22 live auctions, and the closed archive holds 727,187 sold lots, 92,934 of them from the last two years. Open lots carry the live current bid, the bid count and the number of unique bidders; closed lots carry the final contract price.

🎯 Target Audience	💡 Primary Use Cases
Equipment dealers and resellers	Track hammer prices for the makes and models you trade, then bid or price against them
Farmers and contractors	Watch every open lot in your state and category and get alerted before it closes
Appraisers, lenders and insurers	Build auction comps by make, model, year and hours from the sold archive
Market analysts and OEM planners	Measure used equipment prices by region, category and season

📋 What the Purple Wave Auctions Scraper does

💡 Why it matters: Purple Wave shows 50 lots per page, spreads the specs across several tabs, and closes every lot on its own staggered timer. Copying a 450-lot auction by hand takes a day and still misses the serial number, the meter reading and the exact closing time. This Actor collects all of them in one run and never bills for a row it did not deliver.

• 🔗 Any Purple Wave page: an auction (/auction/260923) returns every lot in that sale, a single lot (/auction/260923/item/ER3272) returns just that lot, and a search page returns the whole result set. Filters already in the URL are respected, and pagination is automatic.
• 🔎 Keyword search: add search terms such as skid steer or john deere tractor and each one is paginated in full.
• 💰 Live bids and sold prices: current bid, the next bid increment, the bid count, the number of unique bidders and the time of the last bid on open lots; the final contract price and a sold flag on closed ones.
• 🚜 Equipment identity: make, model, year, three levels of Purple Wave category, plus the serial number or VIN pulled out of the lot description.
• ⏱ Meters and specs: hours, mileage, operational status, engine make and model, fuel type, transmission, drive type, horsepower and GVWR where Purple Wave publishes them.
• 📍 Where the iron is: seller name, city, county, state, ZIP code, latitude and longitude, so you can filter by haul distance.
• ⏳ Staggered closing time: Purple Wave closes lots one at a time, so every row carries its own closingTime alongside the auction-level auctionEndTime.
• 🖼️ Every photo: the main photo, the full photo list (lots routinely carry 70 to 200 images) and the walkaround video when there is one.
• 🔁 Clean data: one lot per row, de-duplicated across pages and sources, the same 51 columns on every row, and Not Disclosed or N/A instead of blank cells.

🎬 Full Demo (🚧 Coming soon)

A short walkthrough video is in production.

📊 Output

Each row is one Purple Wave lot. Fields, in dataset order:

Field	Description
🖼 imageUrl	Main lot photo
🚜 title	Lot title, for example 2023 Ford F550 super duty Crew Cab truck cab and chassis
🔗 url	Lot page on purplewave.com
🏷 lotNumber / 🆔 lotId	Purple Wave item code (ICN) and internal numeric id
🔨 auctionCode / auctionName / 📅 auctionDate	The sale the lot belongs to
🏭 industryCategory / 📂 familyCategory / 🗂 category	Purple Wave's three category levels
🔧 make / ⚙️ model / 📆 year	Equipment identity
🔑 serialNumber / 🚗 vin	Serial number or VIN, read from the lot description
⏱ hours / 🛣 miles	Meter and odometer readings
🩺 conditionNotes	Purple Wave's operational status: Operational, Non-Operational or Unknown
🏭 engineMake / 🔩 engineModel / ⛽ fuelType / 🔀 transmissionType / 🛞 driveType / 🐎 horsepower / ⚖️ gvwr	Powertrain and rating
💰 currentBid / ⬆️ nextBidAmount / 🏁 finalPrice / ✅ sold / 💱 currency	Live bid, the next increment, the contract price once sold, and the sold flag
🔢 bidCount / 👥 uniqueBidderCount / 🕐 lastBidAt	Bidding activity on the lot
⏳ closingTime / 🔔 auctionEndTime / 🚪 isClosed	The lot's own staggered close, the auction close, and whether it is over
🏢 sellerName	Consignor as Purple Wave lists it
🌆 locationCity / 🗺 locationCounty / 🇺🇸 locationState / 📍 locationStateName / 📮 locationZip / 🧭 latitude / 🧭 longitude	Where the lot is located
📝 description	Full spec sheet as plain text
📷 photoCount / 🎬 videoUrl / 🖼 imageUrls	Photo count, walkaround video and every photo URL
🕒 scrapedAt	ISO timestamp of the collection
❌ error	null on success; error rows carry only this field and are never charged

Three real records from a verification run (https://www.purplewave.com/auction/260923, sorted by highest current bid, Max Items 5), with the photo list and description shortened for readability:

[
  {
    "imageUrl": "https://d323w7klwy72q3.cloudfront.net/i/a/2026/20260923ve/EX2172.JPG",
    "title": "2008 Newmar Spartan Essex 4103 RV",
    "url": "https://www.purplewave.com/auction/260923/item/EX2172",
    "lotNumber": "EX2172",
    "lotId": "929052",
    "auctionCode": "260923",
    "auctionName": "Wednesday September 23 Vehicles and Equipment Auction",
    "auctionDate": "2026-09-23T15:00:00.000Z",
    "industryCategory": "Passenger Vehicles, Boats and RVs",
    "familyCategory": "RVs",
    "category": "RV or Camper",
    "make": "Newmar Spartan",
    "model": "Essex 4103",
    "year": 2008,
    "serialNumber": "Not Disclosed",
    "vin": "4VZAU1C968C061466",
    "hours": 510,
    "miles": 51776,
    "conditionNotes": "Operational",
    "engineMake": "Cummins",
    "engineModel": "ISM",
    "fuelType": "Diesel",
    "transmissionType": "Automatic",
    "driveType": "N/A",
    "horsepower": "N/A",
    "gvwr": 48600,
    "currentBid": 45000,
    "nextBidAmount": 45500,
    "finalPrice": "N/A",
    "sold": "No",
    "currency": "USD",
    "bidCount": 39,
    "uniqueBidderCount": 16,
    "lastBidAt": "2026-09-09T17:23:54.000Z",
    "closingTime": "2026-09-23T15:00:00.000Z",
    "auctionEndTime": "2026-09-23T15:00:00.000Z",
    "isClosed": "No",
    "sellerName": "Stark Ranch LLC",
    "locationCity": "Garnett",
    "locationCounty": "Anderson",
    "locationState": "KS",
    "locationStateName": "Kansas",
    "locationZip": "66032",
    "latitude": 38.283291,
    "longitude": -95.240097,
    "description": "2008 Newmar Spartan Essex 4103 RV ; Miles: 51,776 on odometer; Camper length: 41'; VIN: 4VZAU1C968C061466; Engine Cummins ISM; Displacement: 10.8L; Cylinders: 6; Fuel type: Diesel; Transmission Allison; Automatic; Chassis Axles: Tandem; Suspension: Air; Brakes: Air; GVWR: 48,600 lbs ...",
    "photoCount": 128,
    "videoUrl": "https://d323w7klwy72q3.cloudfront.net/i/a/2026/20260923ve/video/HDEX2172.MP4",
    "imageUrls": [
      "https://d323w7klwy72q3.cloudfront.net/i/a/2026/20260923ve/EX2172.JPG",
      "https://d323w7klwy72q3.cloudfront.net/i/a/2026/20260923ve/EX2172A.JPG",
      "https://d323w7klwy72q3.cloudfront.net/i/a/2026/20260923ve/EX2172B.JPG"
    ],
    "scrapedAt": "2026-09-09T18:40:17.092Z",
    "error": null
  },
  {
    "imageUrl": "https://d323w7klwy72q3.cloudfront.net/i/a/2026/20260923ve/FB5040.JPG",
    "title": "2023 Ford F550 super duty Crew Cab truck cab and chassis",
    "url": "https://www.purplewave.com/auction/260923/item/FB5040",
    "lotNumber": "FB5040",
    "lotId": "928269",
    "auctionCode": "260923",
    "auctionName": "Wednesday September 23 Vehicles and Equipment Auction",
    "auctionDate": "2026-09-23T16:00:00.000Z",
    "industryCategory": "Trucks, Medium and Heavy Duty",
    "familyCategory": "Trucks",
    "category": "Truck Chassis",
    "make": "Ford",
    "model": "F550 super duty",
    "year": 2023,
    "serialNumber": "Not Disclosed",
    "vin": "1FD0W5HTXPEC72705",
    "hours": "N/A",
    "miles": 61770,
    "conditionNotes": "Operational",
    "engineMake": "N/A",
    "engineModel": "N/A",
    "fuelType": "Diesel",
    "transmissionType": "Automatic",
    "driveType": "4WD",
    "horsepower": "N/A",
    "gvwr": 19500,
    "currentBid": 31500,
    "nextBidAmount": 32000,
    "finalPrice": "N/A",
    "sold": "No",
    "currency": "USD",
    "bidCount": 22,
    "uniqueBidderCount": 13,
    "lastBidAt": "2026-09-09T18:06:31.000Z",
    "closingTime": "2026-09-23T15:00:00.000Z",
    "auctionEndTime": "2026-09-23T15:00:00.000Z",
    "isClosed": "No",
    "sellerName": "K.C.C.T. Inc.",
    "locationCity": "Collinsville",
    "locationCounty": "Tulsa",
    "locationState": "OK",
    "locationStateName": "Oklahoma",
    "locationZip": "74021",
    "latitude": 36.360481,
    "longitude": -95.848999,
    "description": "2023 Ford F550 super duty Crew Cab truck cab and chassis ; Miles: 61,770 on odometer; VIN: 1FD0W5HTXPEC72705; Engine Displacement: 6.7L; Cylinders: 8; Fuel type: Diesel; Transmission Automatic; Chassis Four wheel drive; Truck chassis: 11'; GVWR: 19,500 lbs ...",
    "photoCount": 70,
    "videoUrl": "https://d323w7klwy72q3.cloudfront.net/i/a/2026/20260923ve/video/HDFB5040.MP4",
    "imageUrls": [
      "https://d323w7klwy72q3.cloudfront.net/i/a/2026/20260923ve/FB5040.JPG",
      "https://d323w7klwy72q3.cloudfront.net/i/a/2026/20260923ve/FB5040A.JPG",
      "https://d323w7klwy72q3.cloudfront.net/i/a/2026/20260923ve/FB5040B.JPG"
    ],
    "scrapedAt": "2026-09-09T18:40:17.111Z",
    "error": null
  },
  {
    "imageUrl": "https://d323w7klwy72q3.cloudfront.net/i/a/2026/20260923ve/ER3272.JPG",
    "title": "2024 GMC Sierra 1500 Crew Cab pickup truck",
    "url": "https://www.purplewave.com/auction/260923/item/ER3272",
    "lotNumber": "ER3272",
    "lotId": "930683",
    "auctionCode": "260923",
    "auctionName": "Wednesday September 23 Vehicles and Equipment Auction",
    "auctionDate": "2026-09-23T15:00:00.000Z",
    "industryCategory": "Passenger Vehicles, Boats and RVs",
    "familyCategory": "Pickups and Vans",
    "category": "1/2 Ton Pickup or Van",
    "make": "GMC",
    "model": "Sierra 1500",
    "year": 2024,
    "serialNumber": "Not Disclosed",
    "vin": "1GTUUGEL8RZ144776",
    "hours": "N/A",
    "miles": 91553,
    "conditionNotes": "Operational",
    "engineMake": "N/A",
    "engineModel": "N/A",
    "fuelType": "Gas",
    "transmissionType": "Automatic",
    "driveType": "4WD",
    "horsepower": "N/A",
    "gvwr": "N/A",
    "currentBid": 31000,
    "nextBidAmount": 31500,
    "finalPrice": "N/A",
    "sold": "No",
    "currency": "USD",
    "bidCount": 37,
    "uniqueBidderCount": 17,
    "lastBidAt": "2026-09-06T04:30:56.000Z",
    "closingTime": "2026-09-23T15:00:00.000Z",
    "auctionEndTime": "2026-09-23T15:00:00.000Z",
    "isClosed": "No",
    "sellerName": "Kohlfeld Distributing Inc.",
    "locationCity": "Jackson",
    "locationCounty": "Cape Girardeau",
    "locationState": "MO",
    "locationStateName": "Missouri",
    "locationZip": "63755",
    "latitude": 37.38195,
    "longitude": -89.661102,
    "description": "2024 GMC Sierra 1500 Crew Cab pickup truck ; Miles: 91,553 on odometer; VIN: 1GTUUGEL8RZ144776; Engine Displacement: 6.2L; Cylinders: 8; Fuel type: Gas; Transmission Automatic; Four wheel drive; Interior AC, Heat; Backup camera; Powered sunroof ...",
    "photoCount": 78,
    "videoUrl": "https://d323w7klwy72q3.cloudfront.net/i/a/2026/20260923ve/video/HDER3272.MP4",
    "imageUrls": [
      "https://d323w7klwy72q3.cloudfront.net/i/a/2026/20260923ve/ER3272.JPG",
      "https://d323w7klwy72q3.cloudfront.net/i/a/2026/20260923ve/ER3272A.JPG",
      "https://d323w7klwy72q3.cloudfront.net/i/a/2026/20260923ve/ER3272B.JPG"
    ],
    "scrapedAt": "2026-09-09T18:40:17.117Z",
    "error": null
  }
]

✨ Why choose this Actor

	What you get
Purple Wave's own numbers	Bids, bid counts, unique bidder counts and contract prices come from the JSON the site renders, not from a screenshot or an estimate.
Serial and VIN, not just a title	Purple Wave buries the serial number and the VIN in the description bullets. This Actor pulls them into their own columns, on 84% and 33% of lots respectively.
Meter readings that survive	When the API field is empty the Actor falls back to the description bullet, which recovers hours on harvesters and mileage on trucks that would otherwise be blank.
Per-lot closing time	Purple Wave staggers closings inside a sale. Every row carries its own closingTime, so a watchlist knows exactly when to bid.
51 columns, one shape	Every row has the same keys in the same order, so CSV imports, joins and Excel filters behave.
No blanks, no nulls	A value Purple Wave withholds is Not Disclosed; a value that does not apply to that machine is N/A. Never an empty cell.
Fast and cheap	HTTP only, 1 GB of memory, no proxy needed, no browser to warm up.

📈 How it compares to alternatives

Feature	This Actor	Typical Purple Wave scrapers	By hand
Fields per lot	51	10 to 20	Whatever you copy
Serial number and VIN as columns	Yes	Rarely	Behind a click
Closed auction results with final price	Yes, 727,187 archived lots	Usually open lots only	One page at a time
Per-lot staggered closing time	Yes	Often only the auction end	Yes
Bid count and unique bidder count	Yes	Rarely	Visible on the lot page
Every photo URL plus the video	Yes, all of them	Usually the thumbnail	Manual
Filters by state and industry category	Yes, verified enums	Varies	Yes
Memory and speed	1 GB, no proxy, no browser	2 to 4 GB with a browser	Hours

🚀 How to use

1. Create a free Apify account with $5 in credit.
2. Open the Purple Wave Auctions Scraper.
3. Paste one or more Purple Wave URLs (or keep the default, which reads every open lot), add search terms or filters if you want, choose Max Items and click Start.
4. Download the dataset as CSV, Excel, JSON or XML from the Storage tab, or read it through the API.

A first run:

{
  "startUrls": [{ "url": "https://www.purplewave.com/auction/260923" }],
  "maxItems": 10,
  "auctionStatus": "upcoming",
  "sortBy": "current_bid-desc"
}

Auction comps from the sold archive:

{
  "searchTerms": ["skid steer"],
  "maxItems": 5000,
  "auctionStatus": "past",
  "yearsOfResults": "2",
  "states": ["KS", "MO", "OK"],
  "sortBy": "endtime-desc"
}

Free-plan runs return up to 10 lots as a preview. Upgrade your Apify plan to collect up to 1,000,000 lots per run.

💼 Business use cases

🏷️ Auction comps for appraisals. An equipment appraiser pulls two years of closed skid steer results, filters by make, model, year and hours, and prices a trade-in against what the machines actually brought.

🚜 Buy-side watchlist. A contractor runs the Actor every morning for excavators in three states, sorts by closingTime and bids on the lots closing that day with the fewest unique bidders.

📊 Regional price spreads. An analyst groups sold tractors by locationState and year to measure where the same machine sells for more, and how the spread moves through the season.

💳 Residual value and lending. A lender collects finalPrice, hours, year and make across thousands of closed lots to fit depreciation curves for its equipment book.

🔌 Automating Purple Wave Auctions Scraper

• Make and Zapier: run the Actor on a schedule and append new lots to Google Sheets or Airtable.
• Slack: post a message when a lot matching your make and model list opens under a target bid.
• Airbyte: sync the dataset into BigQuery, Snowflake or Postgres for comp dashboards.
• GitHub Actions: refresh a sold-price snapshot every night and commit the CSV.
• Google Drive: save each run as an Excel file in a shared folder.

Every integration starts from the Apify API or the ApifyClient for JavaScript and Python.

🌟 Beyond business use cases

• Research: study how no-reserve prices for the same tractor model move across the harvest calendar.
• Personal: watch every lot within 200 miles in the category you need and get notified before it closes.
• Non-profit: a rural co-op checks whether members are paying above auction value for used implements.
• Experimentation: feed description into an LLM to prototype a condition score from the spec sheet.

🤖 Ask an AI assistant about this scraper

Give an AI agent live access to Purple Wave lots through the Model Context Protocol:

$claude mcp add --transport http apify "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=parseforge/purple-wave-auctions-scraper"

Then ask in plain language, for example "Find John Deere tractors under 3,000 hours closing this week in Kansas and Missouri, sorted by current bid".

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

🔗 Which Purple Wave URLs can I paste?

An auction page (https://www.purplewave.com/auction/260923), a single lot page (https://www.purplewave.com/auction/260923/item/ER3272), a search page (https://www.purplewave.com/search/skid+steer) or the calendar (https://www.purplewave.com/auctions, which reads every open lot). Filters already in the URL are kept. Note that https://www.purplewave.com/auction without an auction code is a 404 on the site itself.

🔨 Does it return bid history?

No, and it does not claim to. Purple Wave's bid list endpoint requires a signed-in account, so the per-bid history is not public. What every row does carry is the live currentBid, the nextBidAmount increment, the total bidCount, the uniqueBidderCount and lastBidAt, plus finalPrice once the lot closes.

🏁 How do I get sold prices instead of live bids?

Set Auction status to Closed auction results and pick how many years back to read. Closed lots come back with sold: Yes and the contract price in finalPrice. The archive holds 727,187 lots, 92,934 of them from the last two years.

📦 How many lots can I collect?

There are roughly 3,900 open lots at any time across about 22 live auctions, and 727,187 closed lots in the archive. Pagination was tested past 50,000 rows deep with no ceiling, so the practical limit is your Max Items setting (up to 1,000,000 per run).

⏳ Why do closingTime and auctionEndTime differ?

Purple Wave runs timed auctions and closes lots on a stagger, a couple of lots per minute, with a soft-close extension when a late bid lands. auctionEndTime is when the sale starts closing; closingTime is when that particular lot is scheduled to end.

🔑 Why is serialNumber sometimes Not Disclosed on a truck?

Road vehicles carry a VIN rather than an equipment serial, so those lots fill vin and leave serialNumber as Not Disclosed. Across a 180-lot live sample, 84% of lots published a serial and 33% published a VIN; only 0.6% published neither.

⚠️ What is the difference between Not Disclosed and N/A?

Not Disclosed means Purple Wave did not publish that value for that lot. N/A means the field does not apply to that machine, for example an odometer reading on a grain bin or an engine make on a trailer. The column is still present so every row has the same shape.

🛡️ Do I need a proxy?

No. Purple Wave answers plain datacenter HTTP with no rate limiting or challenge, so the proxy input is off by default and your run costs nothing extra. Turn it on only if you scrape very large volumes and start seeing failures.

🔐 Do I need an API key or a Purple Wave account?

No. Everything the Actor reads is the public data that purplewave.com renders to any visitor.

🖼️ How many photos does a lot have?

Usually a lot. Purple Wave photographs every machine in detail; the sample above carries 70, 78 and 128 images. imageUrl is the main photo, imageUrls is the complete list and photoCount is what Purple Wave reports.

🔁 Can the same lot appear twice?

No. Lots are de-duplicated on the auction code plus the lot number across every page, URL and search term in a run.

⏰ Can I run this on a schedule?

Yes. Use the Apify scheduler to run it hourly, daily or weekly, and add a webhook or an integration to push new rows downstream. Hourly is a good fit for the last day of a sale, when bids move fastest.

📄 What output formats are supported?

JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, HTML table and RSS, from the Storage tab or through the API.

❌ What happens when a request fails?

The Actor retries up to four times with a backoff. If a source still does not answer, it writes one error row naming the source and continues; error rows are never charged.

🔌 Integrate with any app

The dataset is available through the Apify API the moment the run finishes. Use the run-sync-get-dataset-items endpoint for one-shot calls, webhooks to trigger downstream jobs, or the Make, Zapier, Airbyte and LangChain integrations listed on the Actor page.

🔗 Recommended Actors

• Ritchie Bros Auctioneers Scraper
• AuctionTime Equipment Scraper
• ACV Auctions Scraper
• Edmunds Used Cars Scraper

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💡 Pro Tip: browse the complete ParseForge collection.

🆘 Need Help? Open our contact form with your run ID, your input and what you expected.

⚠️ Disclaimer: This Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Purple Wave, Inc. It collects only publicly available data. You are responsible for using the data in compliance with Purple Wave's terms of use and applicable data-protection laws.