PMG Banknote Price Guide Scraper

Scrapes the PMG (Paper Money Guaranty) World Banknote Price Guide — the canonical graded-banknote valuation reference for collectors and dealers. Extracts one dataset row per (note, PMG grade) pair, covering up to 8 grade columns (G4 through MS63) across 306 countries.

What it scrapes

The PMG price guide publishes USD market values for world paper money graded by PMG. Each record in the output corresponds to a single note at a single PMG grade and includes:

• Country, issuer, series, and denomination
• SCWPM Pick catalog number and Friedberg number (where present)
• PMG grade label, numeric grade, and quality designation (EPQ, Net, Star, etc.)
• USD price as listed in the guide
• Obverse image URL and direct link to the price-guide detail page

Output fields

Field	Type	Description
note_id	string	PMG internal note ID (stable across runs)
source_url	string	URL of the price-guide detail page
region	string	Always "world" for this guide
country	string	Country name (e.g. Afghanistan, Canada)
issuer	string	Issuing authority
series	string	Note series or set name
denomination	string	Face denomination with currency unit
issue_year	integer	Year of issue
pick_number	string	SCWPM Pick catalog number
friedberg_number	string	Friedberg catalog number (US-standard, where available)
variety	string	Variety designation (where present)
pmg_grade	string	Full PMG grade label (e.g. 64 EPQ, 58 Net)
grade_numeric	number	Numeric portion of the grade
designation	string	Quality designation — EPQ, Net, Star, etc.
price_usd	number	USD price as shown in the guide
price_as_of	string	Price date or label as shown on the page
image_url	string	Obverse image URL for this note

Input options

Option	Type	Default	Description
maxItems	integer	10	Maximum grade-price records to collect (0 = unlimited)
country	string	(blank)	Filter to a single country by name (e.g. "Canada"). Leave blank to scrape all 306 countries.

How it works

The PMG price guide uses a 3-level ASPX cascade (Country → Issuer → Denomination) that gates all data behind sequential form submissions. This actor:

1. Loads the index page — extracts 306 country options and ASPX form tokens
2. Posts per country — retrieves the issuer list for that country
3. Posts per issuer — retrieves the denomination list
4. Posts per denomination — submits the search form and collects the note ID (deid) values from the results grid
5. Fetches per note — GETs each detail page (/priceguide/world-note-prices.aspx?deid=N), parses the 8-column grade/price table, and emits one record per non-null grade price

Denomination-level filtering keeps each search result well under the 25-row page limit, so no pagination handling is required.

Performance and limits

• Memory: 512 MB
• Timeout: 4 hours (for full 306-country runs)
• Concurrency: 8 parallel detail-page fetches; cascade steps are serial
• Proxy: None required — the site is accessible from datacenter IPs without challenge

Usage tips

• For a quick test, set country to "Afghanistan" and maxItems to 10.
• For a full dataset run, leave country blank and set maxItems to 0. Expect a multi-hour run and roughly 50,000–200,000 records depending on how many grades are populated per note.
• The note_id field is stable across runs and can be used as a deduplication key.