Expect the U.S. Mint to sell between 55 and 61 million ounces of the 2016 American Silver Eagle 1 oz Bullion Coin
By CoinWeek Staff Reports ….
United States Mint sales figures for the 2016 30th Anniversary American Silver Eagle bullion coin continue to demonstrate momentum towards yet another record-breaking year. If Silver Eagle sales exceed last year’s total of 47 million ounces, then 2016 will be the fourth consecutive record year in recent memory.
The table above features data gathered from the Mint’s online bullion sales and mintage figures. As of the time of writing (June 6, 2016), only 71,000 ounces/coins have been sold in the first week of June.
However, a month-by-month comparison with the first five months of 2015’s Silver Eagle sales figures (table, below) reveals a striking jump in demand.
In January 2016, the U.S. Mint sold almost eight percent more (424,500 ounces) of the 1 oz silver bullion coin than it did in 2015. A solid increase but nothing like the 1,760,000 additional ounces sold in February 2016 as opposed to 2015 – an increase in sales of over 58%.
March of 2016 saw an almost 17% increase in sales over the same month in 2015, with 587,000 additional ounces sold.
April has seen the lowest monthly sales figures so far in 2016, but even then the Mint managed to sell 1,220,500 more units than in April of last year, for a sales increase of almost 43%.
But the biggest upswing in sales relative to 2015 occurred in May. Authorized purchasers and distributors bought 2,475,000 more ounces last month than they did in May of 2015, for a 122% increase in Silver Eagle sales. May 2015 saw the lowest sales figures for all of that year, while so far May of 2016 has seen the second-highest monthly total for the 30th anniversary issue.
At the time of writing in the first week of June, the 2016 total ounces/coins sold is almost half of 2015’s year-end total.
Extrapolating yet another record-breaking sales total from these percentages seems a given, but a cursory look at the table for 2015 shows that monthly sales figures were higher (on average) for the second half of the year. If the same turns out to be true for 2016, it can only improve on an already optimistic yearly sales forecast for American Eagle 1 oz Silver Bullion Coins.
Ignoring this, however, the percent increases from 2016 can provide us with a range of end-of-the-year totals that break 2015’s record by several million ounces.
Using the sales figures from June through December of last year, we added an additional 8%–the lowest percent increase from 2016 to date–to each month’s tally and rounded up or down to the nearest 500 units.
Subtracting June’s 71,000 coins from the YTD total, the first five months of 2016 have already seen the sale of 23,413,000 Silver Eagles. We then added this adjusted 2016 total to the adjusted total for the second half of 2015 as seen in the last cell of the table above for a low estimate of 55,871,500 to be sold potentially by the end of 2016.
Similarly, we can take an average percent increase for 2016 (ignoring May’s 122% outlier) of around 25% and produce a high-range estimate of 60,981,000 ounces sold.
We predict the actual total will fall somewhere between the two.
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