What manifests tell you, by platform

Every lot card on BStalker carries a "what we know" meter: six facts a source can publish about a lot, namely an item-by-item manifest, a freight quote, a retail anchor, a category, two or more photos and a condition grade. The archive keeps the same record for each lot at close, which makes a source-by-source scorecard computable from owned data rather than from what each marketplace claims about itself.

Two scope notes before the numbers. The archive records the lots BStalker tracked to a close on each source; no tracker covers the whole of any marketplace’s catalog, so read each row as the tracked population, not the marketplace itself. And the manifest column counts lots where the archive holds the seller’s itemized manifest: several marketplaces publish manifests on their own listing pages that the archive does not hold line by line, so a zero there is a statement about what BStalker holds, not about what the seller publishes.

Each row is one source, each cell the share of that source’s own archived closings carrying the fact, measured 13 October 2026:

Measured 13 October 2026 over the 413,406 lots in BStalker’s closed archive. The sixth meter fact, a freight quote, is not a column because only B-Stock closings carry one in the archive (24.1% of its 65,822). 888 Lots lists a retail-style anchor on its cards, but it moves in a fixed ratio to the price, so the archive does not count it as an independent retail figure.

Read down the columns and three shapes emerge. Liquidation.com, DirectLiquidation and BlueLots closings almost always state how many units are in the lot and usually pair a retail anchor with a condition grade, but no itemized manifest reaches the archive from them. QuickBidz stamps a retail anchor and a condition grade on effectively all of its 79,038 tracked closings while leaving the manifest line blank. GovDeals and Musick closings are the thinnest: a photo set and sometimes a category, with GovDeals’ 77,698 tracked closings carrying no retail anchor and no condition grade at all.

B-Stock is the source whose manifests the archive holds line by line: 46,238 of its 65,822 archived closings (70.2%) carried a seller manifest, and for 31,067 of those the archive holds the full itemized list, 2,187,223 manifest lines in all. The depth figures, measured 13 October 2026 over those 31,067 lots:

• Median lines per manifest: 25, with the middle half between 7 and 100.
• Median units per manifested lot: 87.
• Largest single manifest in the archive: 6,068 lines.
• Lines carrying the seller’s per-unit retail figure: 99.6% of the 2,187,223.
• Median stated retail per manifested lot: $9,090.50, across the 43,919 manifested closings whose manifest carries a retail total.

The spread is wider than the median suggests: 7.4% of itemized manifests are a single line, 21.9% run 2 to 9 lines, 33.4% run 10 to 49, 32.5% run 50 to 199, and 4.8% run 200 lines or more. A manifest can be one line reading "assorted toys" or a 400-line inventory with a retail figure per line, and both land in the same column.

• A manifest is the seller’s own list. The descriptions, grades and retail figures on it are the seller’s statements, not an independent check of what is physically in the lot.
• A zero in the manifest column means the archive holds no itemized manifest for that source’s closings. Several of the nine marketplaces publish manifests on some of their own listings; BStalker simply does not hold those line by line.
• Each row is measured over the lots BStalker tracked to a close on that source, and scan depth differs by source, so the rows compare tracked populations rather than complete catalogs.
• The retail anchor is the seller’s own sticker, and the stock is mostly returns and liquidation goods, so it describes what the seller claimed, not what the goods would fetch.
• These figures are a snapshot of the archive on 13 October 2026. The archive grows daily and the shares drift with it.

The live version of the manifest column is the same six-fact meter on every card in the sample feed, and the statistics page republishes the sitewide figures on its own schedule.

For the lot itself, the free manifest analyzer parses a pasted manifest into units and stated retail, the guide to reading a manifest walks an example line by line, and manifested vs unmanifested covers when a lot with no manifest is still worth a look.