If sales of the Silver Eagle top 500,000 on the last reporting day, total sales in March could surpass 5 million and overtake January as the highest monthly amount.
This would put total sales for 2014 at 13.5 million down compared to the same period last year which reached 14.2 million. While this is a decline year over year, it was more due to allocated limits rather than a fall in demand.
The U.S. Mint didn’t begin selling the 2014′s until the end of the second week in January. Furthermore, the Authorized Dealers purchased every allocated Silver Eagle they could for the month. Which means they couldn’t acquire any more than the 4,775,000 shown in the table.
Even with this limitation, sales in 2014 are doing quite well as purchases in February and March were stronger than last year. Here are the comparisons:
FEB 2013 = 3,368,500
FEB 2014 = 3,750,000
MARCH 2013 = 3,356,500
MARCH 2014 = 4,476,000 (current)
Without including Monday’s update, 2014 Feb & Mar are up 1.5 million compared to 2013.
According to the U.S. Mint, total allocated Silver Eagles for this week were 1,416,500 which would have brought the total for the month to 4.7 million. This week, only 1,192,500 Silver Eagles were sold… which suggests the total allotment was not purchased be the Authorized Dealers.
It will be interesting to see how many Silver Eagles are sold this coming Monday and if demand remains strong in April.
- Source, SRS Rocco:
