How many closed lots do I need for a stable estimate?

For a niche collectible, roughly a dozen realised prices usually stabilise a median; thin categories need a longer window.

Can I exclude outliers?

Yes — realised prices come as individual records with a timestamp, so median and trimmed-mean approaches are straightforward.

Do the scrapers cover both auction and fixed-price sources?

Yes. Mandarake provides the auction floor with closing timestamps, while Mercari provides fixed-price C2C asks, so you can decide which side your analysis should rest on.

Japan Market Data › Japan Auction Price Data

Japan Auction Price Data

Asking price and market value are different numbers, and conflating them is the most common mistake in resale research. Auctions resolve that ambiguity: when a lot closes, the winning bid is evidence.

Collecting realised prices from a Japanese auction floor over a period of weeks gives a defensible valuation base — including the tail of lots that sold cheap because demand, not the item, was missing that week. The Mandarake auction actor is the auction source used here; it returns each lot with a price and an end timestamp, which is what turns a listing into evidence.

Mandarake Auction Scraper → All Japanese market scrapers →

What you get

`item_name`	Lot title.
`current_price_jpy`	Bid or closing price in yen.
`condition`	Grade where published.
`sold_at`	End timestamp — the field that makes the record a realised price.
`item_url`	Lot URL for audit.

Field names follow the actor's dataset schema and can differ slightly between actors — check the actor page for the exact input and output schema before wiring it into a pipeline.

Use cases

Valuation: compute a median realised price per item rather than an average asking price.
Outlier detection: find lots that closed far below the category norm.
Reporting: produce a price trend chart that a non-specialist audience will accept.

How a run works

Starting a run: call the Apify API with the actor id fruitful_quintessence~mandarake-auction-scraper, or press Start on the actor page and download the dataset. Check the actor page for its exact input schema — a run is scoped by the search terms you supply, and billing is per result returned (roughly $0.002 per item).

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/fruitful_quintessence~mandarake-auction-scraper/runs?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"searchTerms": ["your", "search", "terms"]}'

FAQ

How many closed lots do I need for a stable estimate?: For a niche collectible, roughly a dozen realised prices usually stabilise a median; thin categories need a longer window.
Can I exclude outliers?: Yes — realised prices come as individual records with a timestamp, so median and trimmed-mean approaches are straightforward.
Do the scrapers cover both auction and fixed-price sources?: Yes. Mandarake provides the auction floor with closing timestamps, while Mercari provides fixed-price C2C asks, so you can decide which side your analysis should rest on.

What you get

Use cases

How a run works

FAQ

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