U.S. Mint Sells Fewer Coins This Year

The U.S. mint is likely to decline in gold and gold this year. Silver Coins sales than last year. The production Van het Munthuis has even returned to the level of ten years ago, when the financial crisis had just begun. Of course, the comparison with then is not entirely fair, because the prices per coin are higher today than they were then. Nevertheless, it is striking to see that the sale of investment coins has suddenly fallen so sharply in the last two years.

There are several reasons for this decline. The most obvious explanation is that the precious metals have yielded far less returns than the stock market over the last two years. In addition, gold and silver faced competition from virtual currencies such as the Bitcoin as an alternative investment. A third explanation is that due to the fall in the price of silver in recent years, investors put many old investment coins on the market, which reduced the demand for new coins.

Demand for investment coins falls

The US Mint is the largest producer of gold and silver investment coins in the world and is therefore seen as a kind of indicator of the demand for precious metals. The figures may be distorted by a sharp increase in coin sales at other mints, but we have found no indication of this. The Perth Mint and the Royal Canadian Mint have also seen the demand for precious metals decline in the last two years.

Since the beginning of this year, the U.S. mint has produced about 13.5 million Silver Eagle coins, up from 40 million copies per year a few years ago. In its heyday, the mint sold about 3.5 million coins per month, while the monthly average this year is between 1 and 1.5 million coins. The following chart shows this trend using the 12-month average.

The production of silver coins has fallen sharply in the last two years

Production of gold coins falls

Let's look at the production of Gold Coins, then we see a similar trend. It is striking that gold coins were very popular, especially in the first years after the outbreak of the financial crisis in 2008, while silver coins only later received much attention from investors.

The decline of the last two years seems more serious than it is, because there is more secondary supply on the market due to the high production of previous years. If more older coins are offered, this dampens the demand for new coins.

Gold coin production seems to be stabilizing again

Also take a look at our extensive range of Silver Coins and Gold Coins. Many products are available from stock.