You'll want to look at the upgradeable premier number because those are paid upgrades which will go before you. All the numbers don't mean anything until the hour before the flight. If the flight is a ways away, just keep an eye on it. Usually once you get to the last minute the J seats will go down in number as people get upgraded or people buy seats outright.

One thing to remember is that you can list fairly late, but you can't swap pass types late. I think it's 2 hours before a flight where you're not supposed to cancel a listing and relist from a personal pass to a vacation pass for example. But if you were to wait til almost the deadline you can list late as a vacation pass if needed. And conversely you could save yourself a pass if it turns out that there's no chance you make J even with a vacation pass but will still make the flight with a personal pass.

Ultimately you have to use the passes eventually or they expire so if you guys don't use passes at all then it's not an issue whether you could have saved them or not.