acsearch-mcp

MCP server for acsearch.info — the world's largest ancient coin auction archive, with over 16 million lots from 475 auction houses spanning 20+ years.

Give your AI agent the ability to search auction records, retrieve lot details with specs and references, analyze price history, and find comparable sales — all through acsearch.info's Premium database.

Framework-agnostic: works with any MCP-compatible client including Hermes Agent, Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, and Continue.dev.

Quick Start

uvx acsearch-mcp --transport stdio

Requires an acsearch.info Premium account (€85/year) for price data. Set your credentials:

export ACSEARCH_USERNAME="your_username"
export ACSEARCH_PASSWORD="***..."

Cookies are cached to ~/.acsearch_cookies.json after first login — no repeated authentication on every tool call.

Tools

Tool	Description
search	Full-text Boolean search across 16M+ auction lots
get_lot	Full lot details: description, specs, references, provenance
price_history	Year-by-year price analysis for market research and valuation
find_comparables	Recent comparable auction results sorted by date

Search Syntax

acsearch.info uses Boolean full-text search:

Operator	Example	Effect
* (wildcard)	Philip*	Matches Philip, Philippe, Philippus
"..." (phrase)	"Philip II tetradrachm"	Exact phrase match
- (exclude)	-bronze	Exclude results containing the word
(...) (group)	(tetradrachm drachm)	Match either term

Examples: "Philip II tetradrachm", Alexander* stater -bronze, cistophorus Ephes*

Client Configuration

Hermes Agent

mcp_servers:
  acsearch:
    command: uvx
    args:
      - acsearch-mcp
      - --transport
      - stdio
    env:
      ACSEARCH_USERNAME: your_username
      ACSEARCH_PASSWORD: ***

Restart: hermes gateway restart or /reset in CLI.

Claude Desktop

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "acsearch": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["acsearch-mcp", "--transport", "stdio"],
      "env": {
        "ACSEARCH_USERNAME": "your_username",
        "ACSEARCH_PASSWORD": "your_password"
      }
    }
  }
}

Any MCP Client (Generic)

uvx acsearch-mcp --transport stdio

With ACSEARCH_USERNAME and ACSEARCH_PASSWORD set in the environment.

HTTP Mode

For remote or networked clients:

uvx acsearch-mcp --transport http --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8001

Connect to http://host:8001/mcp.

From Source

git clone https://github.com/wushanyun64/acsearch-mcp.git
cd acsearch-mcp
uv sync
uv run acsearch-mcp --transport stdio

How It Works

acsearch.info embeds all search results as structured JSON in a <script> tag:

acsearch.initSearchResults = [
  { "id": "2581457", "title": "Heritage Auctions, Auction 3041, Lot 32015",
    "description": "MACEDONIAN KINGDOM. Philip II...",
    "date": "13.08.2015", "price": "6'250 USD", "image": "https://..." }
];

The parser extracts this JSON directly — no fragile HTML scraping needed. The client authenticates with your Premium credentials, maintains a cookie-backed session, and enforces polite rate limiting (2 seconds between requests).

Limitations

• Descriptions are capped at 350 characters by acsearch.info. The full catalog text is available on the original auction house page (linked in the link field of lot details).
• Prices require a Premium account.

License

MIT © 2026 Jason Sun