US Salvage Auction Statistics & Open Price Data

VinCheck continuously tracks Copart and IAAI salvage-auction activity across the United States and publishes the aggregate sale-price data openly. The VinCheck Auction Price Index aggregates real auction sale prices by year, make, and model — with sample sizes and 25th/50th/75th percentile price bands — refreshed every 6 hours and free to download or cite under CC BY 4.0.

Key statistics

The VinCheck Auction Price Index publishes median and quartile salvage-auction sale prices per year/make/model, updated every 6 hours, under a CC BY 4.0 license. (Source: VinCheck Auction Price Index)
The two dominant US salvage-auction networks, Copart and IAAI, together list millions of total-loss, theft-recovery, and fleet vehicles for auction each year. (Source: Copart / IAA public investor materials)
Salvage-auction listings include pre-repair photos of each vehicle — the most direct visual evidence of prior damage available to used-car buyers, and one that standard history reports from Carfax, AutoCheck, and Bumper do not show. (Source: VinCheck sample report (auction photos))

What the data covers and how to use it

Each row of the index is a (year, make, model) tuple with the number of observed auction sales and the 25th/50th/75th percentile sale prices in USD, filtered to tuples with at least 3 sales for statistical reliability. Journalists, researchers, dealers, and exporters use it to benchmark salvage values, spot depreciation patterns, and sanity-check rebuilder asking prices. Download it as CSV or JSON from the dataset page — attribution to VinCheck is the only requirement.

Why salvage-auction history matters to ordinary buyers

Roughly one in five used vehicles that pass through a salvage auction is later rebuilt and resold. The auction record — damage type, drivability, sale price, and photos — is often the only honest 'before' picture of a rebuilt car. If a seller's story and the auction photos disagree, believe the photos.

Frequently asked questions

Is the VinCheck auction dataset really free?

Yes — the aggregate Auction Price Index is downloadable as CSV or JSON under a CC BY 4.0 license from vincheck.it.com/data. Cite VinCheck as the source and you can use it in articles, research, or tools.

How do I see the auction photos for a specific VIN?

Per-VIN auction records and photos are part of the full VinCheck vehicle history report — run the VIN at vincheck.it.com. The open dataset covers aggregate prices only, not per-VIN records.

How fresh is the data?

The index recomputes from newly-observed auction sales every 6 hours. Each download embeds a generatedAt timestamp.

Cite as: "US Salvage Auction Statistics & Open Price Data," VinCheck, 2026-07-03. https://vincheck.it.com/data/salvage-auction-statistics

More VinCheck data: open auction price dataset · Odometer Fraud Statistics (2026) · Flood-Damaged Car Statistics (2026)

Last updated 2026-07-03. Free to cite with attribution to VinCheck.