Demand for the U.S. Mint Silver Eagles spiked again at the end of the
September pushing sales nearly to three million. In a little more than
a week, Silver Eagle sales jumped from 1.9 million to 2.9 million, nearly
doubling from the previous month. Sales of Silver Eagles in August were
only 1.5 million versus 2.9 million in September.
As I mentioned in my previous update, the U.S. Mint temporarily halted
sales of Silver Eagles at the beginning of September due to a spike in
demand. However, as the U.S. Mint resumed sales, the Authorized
purchasers have been taking advantage of the low price.
Let’s look at my Silver Eagle chart from September 19th:
As we can see, Silver Eagle sales bottomed in May at 380,000, and have
continued to rise over the next four months. Now, if we look at
the U.S. Mint’s most recent update, sales have jumped by nearly 1 million to
2.9 million:
If we exclude sales in January (2017 & 2018), which are
normally elevated due to the new annual release of the Silver Eagle, the last
highest month was in November 2016 at 3,061,000. So, we can
see that demand hasn’t been this robust in nearly two years.
Furthermore, the U.S. Mint reported 350,000 Silver Eagle sales on the
first day in October:
Thus, the single day sale of 350,000 on Oct 1st, is nearly the same as the
total 380,000 set back in May. I believe we may see another strong
month of Silver Eagle sales in October, especially if the silver price
remains weak.
Lastly, I will be putting out an article shortly on the disconnect between
the silver and oil price. Energy is a major factor in the cost to
produce silver. As the oil price continues to increase as the silver
price trends lower, this is putting a lot of pressure on the primary silver
miners. I would imagine we are going to see some of these primary
miners post losses in the third quarter due to higher energy costs while
receiving lower silver and base metal prices.
Check back for new articles and updates at the SRSrocco Report.
