Methodology: where the lots and prices come from

Every lot in Uncle Sold is a real sale. The prices are real winning bids from public US government surplus auctions, and nothing is made up, estimated or adjusted. This page explains where each piece comes from and how the numbers are worked out.

The source: GSA Auctions

The lots come from GSA Auctions, the website the U.S. General Services Administration uses to sell surplus federal property to the public: vehicles, boats, aircraft, heavy equipment, furniture, electronics and a lot of things that are hard to categorize. Any member of the public can bid, and the results are public.

Uncle Sold is an independent game. We aren't part of GSA or any agency, and we don't sell anything. We read what GSA Auctions publishes, the same listings anyone can see.

How a lot gets into the cabinet

1. While the auction is live, our collector reads GSA's public listing feed and saves each interesting lot's details and photo. Photos have to be captured then: GSA stops serving them once a lot closes.
2. After the auction closes, we record the winning bid from GSA's public results.
3. A person picks each day's 5 lots from auctions that have already closed, aiming for a mix of cheap and expensive, ordinary and odd. Lot 5, the headliner, is chosen to be the day's big one.
4. We tidy the listing, rewriting the title so it reads clearly, resizing the photo and removing personal details such as the contact names, emails and phone numbers that appear on listings.

The price

The price is the winning bid when the auction closed. It's what the lot fetched on the day, not an appraisal of what it's "worth".

The photo

Photos are the seller's own listing photos from GSA Auctions, usually taken by the agency that owned the item. We resize and compress them for the game but don't otherwise change them.

Prices are shown only after you bid

The game's pages never contain today's prices. Your browser receives a lot's price only in the reply to your bid on that lot, after your bid has been recorded. No page on this site lists the prices of lots that haven't been played yet.

How scoring works

Scoring measures how far off you were as a ratio, so over and under count the same: guessing $2,000 for a $1,000 lot scores the same as guessing $500.

Lots 1 to 4 are worth up to 117 feet each. Lot 5 counts ×2, up to233 feet, so a perfect day is 700 feet (the rounding would make it one more; the drawer stops at 700). The how to playpage has a table of what each miss is worth.

How the crowd stats stay honest

After each lot you see how your guess compared with everyone else's. Those numbers only mean something if the guesses are honest, so:

• One bid per player per lot. Your first bid is the one that counts; replaying the lot shows the same result.
• Likely lookups are left out. A near-perfect bid that took much longer than a normal guess was probably looked up. It still scores for you, but it isn't counted in anyone's crowd stats.
• No chart from a handful of bids. A lot's crowd chart appears only once it has at least 20 counted bids.
• No names attached. Bids are stored against a random player ID, never a name or email. See privacy.

Corrections

If a price, photo or description is wrong, or a listing shows something it shouldn't, emailhello@unclesold.com with the date and lot. We fix errors as soon as we can confirm them.

Open today's file