Is Heritage's My WantList listings a good indication of future demand for rare coins?

Longacre

I received a letter from Heritage yesterday, announcing their BIG upcoming auction at Central States. In the letter, as an example of the insatiable demand for coins by its clients, Heritage points to its $200 million in My WantList listings logged in by collectors.

Does anyone know if the My WantList feature is a reliable indicator of future demand? If so, then that can be a decent guage of the future health of the numismatic marketplace. Personally, I would not place too much reliance on this feature if I were Heritage. Putting something on My WantList is not like creating a Wishlist for books on the Amazon site. Each coin is unique, and merely having a particular coin in a particular grade is not an indication of true demand for a particular coin. Each coin is assessed independently, unlike a book wish list where every book is basically the same as any other book. I also keep a My Wishlist list on Heritage, but it is so out of date, that I never check the emails that Heritage sends to me when a particular coin matches the Wishlist.

Does anyone know if Heritage uses the My Wishlist in its revenue projections in any way, or just as a marketing tool to convince consignors to consign coins to Heritage?

RYK

I personally have never used the wantlist feature.

When I tracked my coins in My Collection™, the My WantList matches were indicated, and they seemed to be generally proportional for what I would expect to be the demand for the individual coins, but the absolute numbers seemed higher than I would expect. 40+ people out there who need a 61-O $20 in XF? I doubt it, unless this also includes dealers, many of whom may be shopping for the same clients.

ColonialCoinUnion

I think it's a pretty cool concept, but I wonder how accurate the inputs have been to date.

IGWT

Does anyone know if the My WantList feature is a reliable indicator of future demand?

If wishes were horses, beggars might ride.

garsmith

When I first started using Heritage I filled out the want list, but it has been several years since I added too or modified my want list and I think most others are the same.

Cladiator

I just logged in and added about 50 million in coins on my wantlist.

Tonelover

I use it and keep it up to date, saves me a lot of time by not having to watch their massive auction listings and inventory. However, in this day and age most want lists I receive are out of date after about two weeks. I would assume that a great many on Heritage are the same way and if so then they are not a good indication of future demand.

Robgetty

I think that it is a good indicator, but not an absolute.

For example, I have a wantlist for some of the coins that I'm looking for to ensure that one doesn't slip by.

However, I also have on my wantlist coins that I know that I'm not going to buy, but I want to keep track of when they come on the market and know what prices they are getting. As an example: I have an 1872-CC dollar, but I like to see what they are currently trending in the auctions.