LiveAuctioneers Art Prices Realized Scraper

Scrape prices-realized data from LiveAuctioneers for sold art lots. Returns hammer price, estimates, artist, medium, auction house, and full lot details.

What it does

The actor queries LiveAuctioneers' internal JSON APIs — no HTML parsing. It passes the site's bot gate automatically and calls three API endpoints:

• search-party — paginated sold-lot search by keyword, category, and/or auction house
• item-facets — artist name, medium, and art category enrichment per lot
• content/items — lot detail by itemId (for BYO URL mode)
• priceresultsummary — slug→itemId resolution for legacy URL formats

Modes

1. Keyword / category search (default)

Set keyword and/or categoryId to page through sold lot results. Combine with auctionHouseId to scope to a single auction house.

2. BYO lot URLs

Supply a list of price-result URLs (e.g. https://www.liveauctioneers.com/price-result/some-lot-slug/). The actor resolves each URL to a lot ID and fetches full detail and enrichment data.

Input

Field	Type	Description
keyword	string	Search keyword or artist name (e.g. "Picasso", "watercolor landscape")
categoryId	integer	LiveAuctioneers category ID (1=Art, 8=Drawings, 14=Paintings, 12=Prints & Multiples)
auctionHouseId	integer	Filter to a specific auction house by their seller ID
lotUrls	array	List of price-result URLs for direct lot lookup
maxItems	integer	Maximum number of records to return (default: 10)

Output

Each record contains:

Field	Description
lot_id	LiveAuctioneers itemId
auction_id	Catalog/auction ID
auction_title	Auction catalog title
auction_house	Auction house name
sale_date	Sale date (YYYY-MM-DD)
lot_number	Lot number within the auction
title	Lot title
artist_name	Artist/creator name (from facets enrichment)
medium	Material/technique (e.g. "Oil on canvas", "Watercolor")
dimensions	Dimensions string parsed from description
category	Art category (e.g. "Paintings", "Prints & Multiples")
low_estimate	Low pre-sale estimate
high_estimate	High pre-sale estimate
estimate_currency	Currency code for estimates
sold_price	Hammer/realized price
sold_currency	Currency code for sold price
is_sold	Whether the lot sold
num_bids	Number of bids received
thumbnail_url	Lot thumbnail image URL
lot_url	Canonical price-result URL

Example output

{
  "lot_id": 123456789,
  "auction_id": 987654,
  "auction_title": "Fine Art & Antiques",
  "auction_house": "Heritage Auctions",
  "sale_date": "2024-03-15",
  "lot_number": "42",
  "title": "Watercolor Landscape with Figures",
  "artist_name": "John Marin",
  "medium": "Watercolor on paper",
  "dimensions": "12\" x 18\"",
  "category": "Paintings",
  "low_estimate": 2000,
  "high_estimate": 3000,
  "estimate_currency": "USD",
  "sold_price": 3500,
  "sold_currency": "USD",
  "is_sold": true,
  "num_bids": 12,
  "thumbnail_url": "https://p1.liveauctioneers.com/...",
  "lot_url": "https://www.liveauctioneers.com/price-result/..."
}

Use cases

• Art market research and price benchmarking
• Artist valuation and market trend analysis
• Auction house performance tracking
• Collection appraisal support
• Investment research for art assets

Notes

• Results are limited to sold lots with realized prices
• Artist enrichment (artist_name, medium, category) comes from LiveAuctioneers' facets API and may not be available for all lots
• Dimension extraction uses pattern matching on the description field; not all lots include dimensions
• The BYO URL mode supports both modern slugs (<itemId>-<catalogId>-title) and legacy title-only slugs