How fast liquidation lots actually sell

The population is the archive’s closed auctions: the 247,800 lots in the archive on 13 October 2026 that genuinely closed, one row per lot, spanning 23 April to 13 October 2026. The clock for each lot runs from first_seen_at, the moment BStalker’s tracker first saw the lot in a scrape, to ends_at, the auction’s own published deadline. A closing qualifies when that window is positive: 247,784 of the 247,800 (99.99%). The other 16, all QuickBidz lots whose recorded deadline sat at or before their first sight, are excluded from every duration figure below.

One scope note before the numbers, because the whole study hangs on it: first_seen_at is when the tracker first saw the lot, not when the seller listed it. A lot listed before tracking began, or during a gap in coverage, reads short. Every figure here is therefore a lower bound on the true listing window, and where this post says "days on the market" it means days on the market that BStalker observed.

Measured 13 October 2026, over the 247,784 measurable closings:

Measured 13 October 2026 over 247,784 closings with a positive observed window. The window runs from the tracker’s first sight of the lot to the auction’s own deadline; the median is 2.4 days, the middle half runs 1.2 to 5.2 days, and the 99th percentile is 14.1 days.

Two lots in nine effectively demand a same-day decision: the under-24-hours bucket holds 55,964 closings, more than the 1-to-2-day and 3-to-4-day buckets combined. At the other end, one lot in eleven (9.1%) stayed open a week or more, so the patient tail is real too. The bulk of the market, though, lives in a one-to-seven-day band: 73.2% of closings sit between 1 and 7 days from first sight to deadline.

Median observed window by category, measured 13 October 2026. The middle half runs from the 25th to the 75th percentile; every figure in a row is computed over that row’s closing count:

Measured 13 October 2026. No category is suppressed: the smallest cells, Books & Media at 663 closings and Pet at 693, still carry enough weight for a median and a middle half. "Not yet categorized" is the cohort whose titles the archive’s classifier has not bucketed; it is the largest row and leans toward local-auction sources with longer listing windows, so read it as a mix, not a category.

The fast end is furniture, appliances and sports at a 1.4-day median; home goods, beauty, apparel and pet sit around 1.8 to 2.0 days. The slow end is auto at 5.9 days, books and media at 4.2, and jewelry at 3.4. A pattern that fits the sources: the big pallet marketplaces run short fixed windows of one to three days, while categories weighted toward local auction houses and government surplus inherit those sources’ longer listing cycles.

Split by marketplace, measured 13 October 2026, and the category spread mostly resolves into a source spread:

Measured 13 October 2026 over the same 247,784 measurable closings. B-Stock’s sub-day median is its standard one-day auction window; Musick’s near-week median is the local auction house’s listing cycle. The window a lot gets is set when the seller lists it, not by how quickly buyers pile in.

That is the right mental model for the buyer question this post answers. "How long do I have to decide" is not set by demand; it is set by the listing window the seller chose, visible on every lot’s own deadline. What the archive adds is the odds: across 247,784 closings, a random lot gave you 2.4 days at the median, a 22.6% chance of under 24 hours, and a 9.1% chance of a week or more.

• The clock starts at the tracker’s first sight, not the seller’s listing date. A lot listed before tracking began on 23 April 2026, or during a coverage gap, reads short, so every figure is a lower bound on the true listing window.
• Some lots leave the feed and come back. 26,320 of the 247,784 measurable closings (10.6%) were observed in more than one stint, and the observed window restarts on re-entry, so those lots read shorter than their true total time on the market.
• A short window is not a fast sale. The window is the seller’s chosen listing length; a lot can sit with no bids until its deadline and close at its opening price. Nothing here measures how quickly buyers moved on any lot.
• The population is auctions that genuinely closed on their own deadline. Fixed-price catalog rows that simply delisted carry no close clock and appear in no cell above.
• Early coverage is thin. The archive holds no lots that closed in May 2026 at all, April holds 2,797 closings and June 9,232 against September’s 91,638, so the earliest months’ medians describe small cohorts and the headline rests on July onward.
• A median describes a cohort, not the lot in front of you. Any specific lot’s deadline is on its own card, and it is the only figure that matters for that lot.
• These figures are a snapshot of the archive on 13 October 2026. The archive grows daily and the medians drift with it.

Every lot in the live feed carries its own deadline on the card, so the per-lot answer to "how long do I have" is always exact rather than statistical: the sample feed shows the same cards with no account, and the statistics page carries the sitewide closing figures recomputed on its own schedule. The trends pages track asking-price movement by category on the live side, and the companion study the cost-per-unit index prices the same archive per unit. The free pallet calculator folds a lot’s bid, premium, freight and your own resale prices into a landed cost per unit on your own numbers.