Bob Shop (Bidorbuy) product data API

ShopAPIS returns structured Bob Shop product data — listing title, brand, buy-now and auction price in South African rand, seller, item condition, bid count, time-left and stock — as clean JSON from bobshop.co.za. Bob Shop is the rebranded Bidorbuy, South Africa’s longest-running C2C and B2C marketplace with deep auction heritage (Fast Company SA, SA e-commerce landscape ). Its mix of fixed-price and auction listings makes it a distinct South African data source for second-hand pricing, collectibles and long-tail SKUs that Takealot and Amazon.co.za do not carry.

Auction marketplaces add a dimension general parsers ignore: alongside a buy-now price, listings carry live bids, reserve prices and a countdown — dynamic signals that define the real clearing price.

Why Bob Shop data is hard to get

Bob Shop blends fixed-price buy-now listings with live auctions, so a single product can have a current bid, a reserve, a time-left countdown and a separate buy-now price — all changing in real time behind bot defense. Bob Shop exposes no public product API for catalog or pricing at scale. Auction state turns over by the minute, item condition is seller-described free text, and the C2C seller pool means trust signals (ratings, member-since) matter as much as price. ShopAPIS captures the buy-now price, the live auction state with bid count and time-left, the parsed condition and the seller trust signals in one record.

Data fields returned

• Listing — listing ID, title, brand, category path, listing type (auction / buy-now)
• Pricing — buy-now price, current bid, reserve flag, currency (ZAR)
• Auction — bid count, time-left, auction status
• Condition — new / used / refurbished as listed
• Seller — seller name, rating, member-since, seller type
• Availability — quantity available for buy-now listings
• Media — image set
• Shipping — shipping cost, collection option

Sample response

{
  "platform": "bobshop",
  "country": "ZA",
  "listing_id": "BB-30217845",
  "url": "https://www.bobshop.co.za/item/bb-30217845",
  "title": "Canon EOS 700D DSLR Camera Body + 18-55mm Lens",
  "brand": "Canon",
  "category": ["Cameras & Optics", "Digital Cameras", "DSLR"],
  "listing_type": "auction",
  "buy_now_price": 3499.00,
  "current_bid": 2150.00,
  "reserve_met": false,
  "currency": "ZAR",
  "auction": { "bid_count": 14, "time_left": "1d 6h", "status": "active" },
  "condition": "Used",
  "seller": { "name": "CapeTownGear", "rating": 99.2, "member_since": "2016", "type": "business" },
  "availability": { "quantity": 1 },
  "shipping": { "cost": 99.00, "collection": true },
  "images": ["https://images.bobshop.co.za/.../canon-700d.jpg"]
}

Markets and domains covered

Bob Shop operates a single South African storefront at bobshop.co.za (South Africa, ZAR), in English. ShopAPIS resolves listings by URL or by listing ID and returns rand pricing with both the buy-now price and the live auction state. The condition and seller trust signals are parsed for every listing.

Use cases

• Second-hand price discovery — benchmark used cameras, electronics and collectibles in ZAR (/solutions/price-monitoring).
• Auction-clearing intelligence — track current bids and time-left to estimate real clearing prices (/solutions/competitive-intelligence).
• Long-tail catalog discovery — surface SKUs and collectibles absent from Takealot (/solutions/catalog-enrichment).
• Listing supply tracking — monitor auction and buy-now listing volume by category (/solutions/inventory-tracking).

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