Bullion coin nightmares at the United States and Perth Mints as sales nosedive to new lows

We’re all used to volatility in the precious metal bullion coin market and we’re all equally aware of the seeming disconnect between where the spot price is and where we think it should be given the economic indicators. The spot price in 2017 has shown the same kinds of movement as it has over the last few years, a succession of rapidly moving peaks and troughs. Bullion coin sales however, are experiencing some quite unusual sales changes. We only track Perth, US and RCM sales as they’re the only three mints with enough volume that publish figures throughout the year, although the RCM considerably less useful owing to their quaterly nature and delay in reporting. We track from January 2013 as that’s when numbers for all three are available from, so our comments refer to this period.

Numbers at the Perth and US Mints for April tell a similar story to each other and it isn’t a pretty picture. The Eagle programme at the United States Mint is huge, the silver being easily the worlds most popular bullion coin. Ignoring an anomalous December 2016 when the coin was available in strictly limited numbers, April 2017 is the worst months numbers we’ve seen and the first under one million ounces. It’s not even a third of the previous low of the last five Aprils. Gold remarkably, is faring even worse. Sales are down 94% on April 2016 and 71% on March 2017. Take a look at our graphs, 2017 is in yellow, to visually see just how bad it is.

The Perth Mint managed to improve on US Mint gold sales, racking up 10,490 ounces compared to Eagle sales of a paltry 6,000. That doesn’t stop them being down a third on the next poorest month since January 2013. Apart from January, every month in 2017 has been the lowest of the previous five of that month. Silver also hugely under-performs. While not breaking any records for poor sales, you have to allow for the new low margin Kangaroo coin that saw silver coin sales at Perth rise dramatically. In that context, this is the worst month since the Kangaroo was introduced last September.

What’s happening? Uncertainty in politics and economics isn’t helping, but that isn’t new, so who knows? Theories will abound, no doubt. Early signs are that US Mint sales at least will rise in May as numbers for the first two days seem encouraging by comparison, but it’s too early to tell how well. We’ve updated our Bullion Sales page to make the graphs clearer; they’re wider and colours have been standardised. They paint a telling picture. The table below shows this months numbers and how far they’ve fallen since last month and since twelve months ago. Red means a drop. There’s lots of red…