United States and Perth Mints silver sales recover well but gold sales remain weak

Time for a quick look at bullion coin sales from the big mints and the picture is one of a recovery from April sales, one of the worst on recent record, but not on the same period last year, against which the market remains depressed.

First the good news is that Perth silver and American Silver Eagle sales have risen heavily since April, but remember, that was a calamitous month. Both remain lower than May 2016, the latter by almost half. Year to date, both mints are heavily down and hovering close to a drop of half.

Gold at both mints has risen over Aprils numbers, but that wasn’t exactly hard given last months performance. Compared to May 2016, Eagle and Buffalo sales are still very poor, down 81% and 73% respectively. Only Perth Mint gold numbers are anything to crow about, actually up 41% on the same month last year and clocking their second best month of 2017. Take a look at our graphs, 2017 is in yellow, to better see the overall trends.

The Royal Canadian Mint has finally published figures for Q1 of 2017, so they’re still lagging behind data on their contemporaries. Gold coin sales of 208,300 ounces are as close to 2016 numbers as can be, just off by 4,300 ounces. No such joy on the silver front however, sales dropping precipitously from 10.6 million ounces, to just 4.7 milion. You have to go back to 2013 for a worse performance.

What’s happening? Well the news is a little better after the April from hell last month, but the fact remains that overall numbers from the first half of 2017 are down heavily on H1 2016, moreso at the US Mint. Outside of Perth Mint gold, there are no signs of a change in volume and we’ll just have to continue to monitor and see where it goes.

 COIN SALES (oz) COMPARED TO: YEAR TO DATE COMPARED TO:
MAY-2017 APR-2017 MAY-2016 JAN-MAY 2017 JAN-MAY 2016
US GOLD EAGLE 14,500 +81% -81% 186,500 – 56%
US SILVER EAGLE 2,455,000 +195% -45% 11,247,500 -52%
US GOLD BUFFALO 5,000 +43% -73% 64,500 -34%
PERTH MINT GOLD 10,490 +183% +41% 160,403 -20%
PERTH MINT SILVER 468,977 +76% -15% 3,745,136 -42%