Silver Eagles Sales in July 2010 Break Record

Adding flames to the fire on an already hot year for bullion 2010 American Silver Eagles, July sales of the silver coins again attained record levels.

Coming in at 2,981,000 coins sold, the month goes down in the history books as the best ever July for the series that was introduced back in 1986. The old record was hit just last year when sales of the Silver Eagles came in slightly over 2.8 million — shattering the previous record set in 2008 of only 1.25 million.

The increases over the last three years are a perfect indicator of demand on an annual basis as well. 2008 American Silver Eagles ended the year with a record 19.6 million sold, beating the previous record holder of 2002 by over 9 million coins. While extremely impressive, the 2008 record status only lasted a year and was smashed by the 2009 total of 28.7 million coins sold.

Indications are that the 2009 record will be blown out of the water by this year’s numbers. With seven months wrapped up, the United States Mint already shows 21.1 million coins purchased by its dealers. This leaves an average of a bit over 1.5 million per remaining months in the year for 2010 to become the new record holder. Considering almost 3 million were sold in July (a month typically not known for large Silver Eagle volume), it is nearly unfathomable that 2010 would not shoot past last year.

Supporting this conclusion is the current line-up for the top ten months ever for Silver Eagle Sales. Since their debut in 1986, the coins have been available for over 280 individual months. 2010 currently holds five of the top ten monthly sales slots. (July 2010 came in as the seventh best month ever for the coins.)

Making this feat even more interesting is the fact that the U.S. Mint is still throttling the sales of the strikes. Unable to obtain enough blank planchets to keep up with potential orders, the Mint has its network of authorized purchasers on an allocation system, meaning it may ship only a portion of the requested orders based on availability and the buyer’s past order history.

This all comes as bad news for collectors of the numismatic versions of the silver coins. As the Mint is required by law to strike the bullion coins to meet demand, it may once again cancel production of the proof and uncirculated American Silver Eagles for 2010, just as it had done in 2009.

It appears the only possible way for numismatic coins to appear this year would be for congressional intervention, a possibility which has been discussed recently in a Congressional subcommittee hearing. For more on this, read 2010 Proof Silver Eagle Coins Update.