acsearch-mcp 0.1.0

MCP server for acsearch.info — ancient coin auction archive with 16M+ lots

acsearch-mcp

MCP server for acsearch.info — the ancient coin auction archive with 16M+ lots from 475 auction houses. Framework-agnostic: works with any MCP-compatible client (Hermes, Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, Continue.dev, etc.).

Setup

git clone [e-mail]:wushanyun64/acsearch-mcp.git
cd acsearch-mcp
uv sync

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

Credentials are passed via environment variables:

export ACSEARCH_USERNAME="your_username"
export ACSEARCH_PASSWORD="your_password"

Session cookies are cached to ~/.acsearch_cookies.json after first login to avoid re-authenticating on every tool call.

MCP Tools

Tool	Description
search	Full-text Boolean search with wildcards, phrases, exclusions
get_lot	Full lot details: description, specs, references, provenance
price_history	Year-by-year price analysis for market research
find_comparables	Recent comparable auction results for valuation

Search Syntax

• * — wildcard (auto-appended to 3+ char words)
• "..." — exact phrase
• -word — exclude results containing word
• (...) — group sub-queries

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

Client Configuration

Hermes Agent

Add to ~/.hermes/config.yaml:

mcp_servers:
  acsearch:
    command: uv
    args:
      - --directory
      - /path/to/acsearch-mcp
      - run
      - acsearch-mcp
      - --transport
      - stdio
    env:
      ACSEARCH_USERNAME: your_username
      ACSEARCH_PASSWORD: your_password

Then restart: hermes gateway restart (or /reset in CLI).

Claude Desktop

Add to claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "acsearch": {
      "command": "uv",
      "args": [
        "--directory", "/path/to/acsearch-mcp",
        "run", "acsearch-mcp", "--transport", "stdio"
      ],
      "env": {
        "ACSEARCH_USERNAME": "your_username",
        "ACSEARCH_PASSWORD": "your_password"
      }
    }
  }
}

Claude Code / Cursor / Continue.dev

Any MCP client that accepts stdio command config. Point command to uv, pass --directory /path/to/acsearch-mcp run acsearch-mcp --transport stdio as args, and include the two ACSEARCH_* env vars.

Generic MCP Client (stdio)

ACSEARCH_USERNAME="your_username" \
ACSEARCH_PASSWORD="your_password" \
uv --directory /path/to/acsearch-mcp run acsearch-mcp --transport stdio

HTTP Mode (remote / networked clients)

uv run acsearch-mcp --transport http --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8001

Then connect your client to http://host:8001/mcp.

Architecture

acsearch_mcp/
├── server.py    # FastMCP server with 4 tools (stdio + HTTP)
├── client.py    # HTTP client: login, cookies, rate limiting
├── parser.py    # JSON extraction from script tags, HTML fallback
└── models.py    # Dataclasses: SearchResult, LotDetail, etc.

Key insight: acsearch.info embeds search results as acsearch.initSearchResults = [{...}] JSON in a <script> tag. No fragile HTML parsing needed for search results.

Limitations

• Descriptions are capped at 350 characters by acsearch.info. The full catalog text lives on the original auction house page (accessible via the link field in lot details).
• Prices are only visible with a Premium account.