Why are there so many missing coins in the Heritage database?

DesertLizard

Anyone notice how so many coins never come up when searching the Heritage DB? It is easy to believe some coins never make appearances but many do and are never captured by Heritage.

Here are 2 coins I was recently offered:

Example 1 : 1874-cc NGC AU58 $20 sold for $2703 on 1/13/03
Do a search of all $20 Lib w/o specifying the slab service or the grade {just the date and MM} and you come up with lots of sales but not the one above.

Example 2 : 1868 PCGS AU50 sold for $1438 on 1/13/03
Same as example one, no such coin turns up.

The only way to find these coins is if you know which auction they appeared and search by denomination. Not too useful.

I wish heritage would fix this as it can be very misleading. They appear to be aware of the issue but can't or won't fix it. I talked to ?? about it last September and he claimed they were working on it.

jeffnpcb

I've spent some time searching for certain coins and had a tough time! If you don't have the auction name and date, as well as the item number, it gets tough tracking down an item! I stay in search of the current auctions and selling inventory, then write that information down for possible follow-up. If you want to load up the computer, you can always save the page in a file and dump it later!

Barry

The Heritage database has had problems for at least a month. I also noticed that My Wantlist has entries, but when I click on the link it brings up an error message. For example:
ADODB.Recordset error '800a0bcd'
Either BOF or EOF is True, or the current record has been deleted. Requested operation requires a current record.
/common/auctions/lots.asp, line 209

They are aware of the problem(s). On a positive note you've got to give them lots of credit for keeping such a database. Wish the other big players did the same...

gmarguli

I noticed that too. It used to be that when you searched for a specific coin, it'd give you results that didn't match. Now it fails to find matching results.

I also noticed a bunch of auction lots one had one picture and a couple had none at all.

Their site is pretty buggy.

Lakesammman

It's a problem with current inventory too. I called on a coin recently (a Friday) and was told it would be shipped to me. I emailed 4 days later (following Tuesday) out of concern that it hadn't arrived. The response was they've never had a coin like that for sale and that I must have been looking at a different web page. I persisted. Turns out they had sold the coin 2 days after I called. They are getting the coin back so it can be shipped to me (thankfully).

In a nutshell, it's not just the auction records. How would you like to be a consignor and, after the auction be told, "what collection"??

Trime

Heritage just upgraded their web site. Maybe it will take a little post beta time to defrag it.