US Mint Sales For March: US on pace to use all domestic mine production for Silver Eagles
Pay Attention GLD, PHYS, PSLV, and SLV investors - the U.S. Mint's full March sales numbers show the strongest March in terms of silver eagles sold. We will go inside the numbers to show this to investors, but the dichotomy between the silver price and silver sold seems to continue, with strong physical investment demand being opposed by relentless paper sales.
Analyzing the U.S. Mint Sales Numbers
When analyzing sales numbers it is important that investors go past the headlines and dig deep into the true nature of the sales. For brevity we are only showing the last few years of sales, but for doing comparisons we have used data from the beginning of the current bull market in 2001.
To start, let's take a look at the U.S. Mint sales numbers for silver and gold for March and compare them to the same month in previous years. We are doing a year-over-year comparison because coin sales are very seasonal in nature; to get a fair read we have to compare March to March.
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The first thing that stands out about the numbers is that silver eagle sales continue to be very strong with 3,356,500 ounces sold in March. This was the second largest amount ever sold in March, and the only March that surpassed this number was in 2010 - when silver prices were 40% lower. The year-to-date numbers continue to impress with 14 million silver ounces sold through March - which is 15% higher than the second highest month (March 2011). As a reminder, 2011 was the strongest year for silver eagle sales (and for the silver price) with 39 million silver eagles selling in 2011, and if we continue matching this sales pace, 2013 will be 15% higher than 2011 and reach 45 million silver eagles sold.
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