For industrial surplus resellers
It tells you when it cannot read the plate.
Photograph a nameplate and Surplus Pilot reads it, checks the number against 67,457 catalogued parts, prices it from completed sales and writes the listing. When the plate is scratched, sideways or half‑painted, it hands the part back and names what it could not read — instead of inventing a part number that goes live under your account.
In private beta. Nothing to buy, and no card to enter.
- SQUARE Dbrand, not a part number
- CAT NO.a label for the next line
- ED63B100in the catalogue · 2 dealers
- 100A 600VACrating
- E12345UL file number
- LI4‑3Pa lug kit sold separately
- SER. 8104773serial, unique to this unit
- MADE IN USA—
Seven of the eight strings on that plate are not the part number, and three of them look exactly like one. The catalogue is what settles it.
Every other tool always has an answer.
That is the problem.
A model asked to read a nameplate will almost never say no. Turn the plate ninety degrees — which is how half of them are mounted on a moulded case — and it returns a different part number, at the same confidence, in the same certain tone. We measured this on our own bench: three runs of one photograph, three different answers, every one of them reported as legible.
So Surplus Pilot does not ask a model to be sure. It reads every string on the plate, then checks each one against a catalogue of part numbers that manufacturers have actually printed. A string nobody has ever printed is not a part number, however confident anything is about it. When nothing survives that check, you get the card on the right.
ED63B100
Square D · 3‑pole 100 A moulded case breaker
- Read from
- the nameplate, on the device
- Catalogue
- matched · 2 independent dealers
- Confidence
- 0.88
—
Nothing on this plate matches a known part number.
- Read from
- 4 orientations, all tried
- Catalogue
- no match for any legible string
- Needs
- a readable catalogue number — retake the plate filling the frame
Both of these are the real output. The second one is the feature.
Four photographs, one part.
The same walk down the row you already do, with the typing taken out. Nothing leaves the phone before you have looked at it.
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1
Aim at the plate
Brackets show the frame. The phone grades its own focus and glare on every frame and holds out for a sharp one, so you are not squinting at a blurred photograph three hours later with the part back on the shelf.
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2
It reads, then argues with itself
Transcription happens on the device. The catalogue decides which of those strings is the part number and which is the accessory kit, the UL file number or the wiring diagram reference.
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3
Three more photographs
Front, condition, detail. Or hand it two hundred photographs you already took, and it groups them into parts by when they were shot and finds the nameplate inside each group.
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4
You approve it
Title, description, price and photographs come back filled in. Correct whatever is wrong and approve. It does not publish on its own, ever.
A price that shows its work.
The usual approach is to average what other dealers are asking. Asking prices are not sale prices: a part sitting at $900 for three years is evidence of nothing at all, and the gap between the two is not a rounding error. Surplus Pilot is calibrated against completed sales, and it carries the error bar with the number rather than hiding it.
Suggested listing price
$182
likely range $120–$260
- Basis
- calibrated from completed sales
- Evidence
- 5 listings, 2 independent dealers
- Caveat
- only two independent sources — treat the range as wide
Figures illustrative. The shape is the point: a number never travels without its basis, its range, and whatever is wrong with it.
There is no signal in the storage building.
Every reseller says this within about a minute, and it is why intake is still done on paper. Surplus Pilot captures with no connection at all. Photographs and parts are held on the phone, a bar across the screen tells you how many are waiting, and nothing is deleted until the server has confirmed it in writing.
Close the app mid-batch and it warns you. Lose the connection halfway through an upload and it resumes instead of starting over. A part cannot be recorded twice, because it carries its own identifier from the moment you shoot it. A day of work in a metal building is the thing we are least willing to lose.
What it will not do.
- It will not certify a part. Not genuine, not safe, not tested, not UL‑listed. It reports what the plate says and what parts like it have sold for. What you warrant to a buyer stays your decision.
- It will not publish for you. Every listing passes a person before it goes anywhere. That is a design decision, not a missing feature.
- It will not guess a part number. If the catalogue does not recognise it, you get a refusal with a reason attached.
- It will not sell your data. Your photographs, your part numbers and your corrections are yours. We do not sell them, and we do not sell a profile of you assembled out of them.
Early access
Surplus Pilot is being built alongside one reseller, on his own inventory, and is not open yet. If you move industrial surplus and want it when it opens, leave an address and I will write to you — an actual note, not a drip sequence.
One address, used once, to tell you it is open. Or write straight to sam@surpluspilot.com.