U.S. Mint to resume selling Silver Eagle coins on November 17

The U.S. Mint will resume taking orders from November 17 for Silver Eagle investment coins. At that time, a new supply of 1 million silver coins will become available, the mint recently announced to its customers.

The big drops in the price of silver earlier this month caused a Stampede on silver coins such as the American Silver Eagle, the Canadian silver Maple Leaf and the Austrian Philharmoniker. The U.S. Mint was surprised by the sudden increase in demand and quickly ran out of coins. The mint decided not to take any new orders for the time being and to scale up the production of the silver coins.

"As you know, the drop in silver prices over the past four weeks has caused a significant increase in demand for U.S. Silver Eagle investment coins. We'll have over one million 2014 Silver Eagles available when sales resume on November 17.", the U.S. Mint wrote in a statement.

Stock sold out

At the end of each year, mints such as the US Mint reduce the production of their investment coins, so that they are not left with a supply of 'old' coins. The mints prefer to play it safe, which means that it regularly happens that the mint is unable to accept new orders by the end of the year. Last year, the 2013 coins sold out so quickly that silver coins were no longer available at the mint from 9 December. It wasn't until the launch of the new 2014 series on January 13 that traders were able to place orders for the Silver Eagle coins again. Demand was so high at the beginning of this year that the mint had to ration deliveries until the end of May.

Silver Eagle soon to be available

"The recent volatility in the silver price, with a drop to the lowest level in five years, created increased demand for the Silver Eagle coins. Weekly sales rose to 1.16 million troy ounces since the beginning of October, up 98% from 586,000 troy ounces per week in the July through September quarter. This calendar year we have already sold 39,381,000 silver Eagle coins. Last year, a record 42,675,000 coins were sold"Tom Jurkowsky of the US Mint's PR department told Coin News.

"If the demand is greater than the supply that can be delivered directly from stock, the US Mint applies a policy of rationing", Jurkowsky added. The mint had already started production of the new 2015 Silver Eagles, but due to the sudden increase in demand for coins, all production is temporarily converted back to 2014 copies.