US Mint Sales: 2010 Silver Eagles Explode on Release

In what has become almost a weekly routine of late, the United States Mint again reported unimpressive sales according to their latest figures. A few bright spots did emerge, however.

The most impressive gains come not from a numismatic item, but from the US Mint’s bullion coins. Recall that the bullion 2009 American Silver Eagles sold out on January 12th, with 2010-dated coins not appearing for sale until this last Tuesday. The situation left authorized purchasers with no silver bullion options for almost a full week.

They made up for this lack of availability and then some. In less than two days, Mint records show an astounding 2,480,000 were purchased. Put another way, in less than 48 hours the Mint sold over 8.6% of the total number of Silver Eagles it had sold in all of 2009.

The one ounce Gold Eagle bullion coins are also doing nicely, especially when you consider that the Mint is requiring its authorized purchasers to buy one 2009-dated coin for every three 2010 coin they want until the 2009s are depleted. 69,000 have been sold so far this month.

A few other highlights from the latest Mint figures:

• The 2009 DC & US Territories Quarters Proof Set saw a downward adjustment of 6,809 units. It is unclear if this is an error in the reporting, an accounting correction, or a massive amount of returns. Next week’s figures might shed some light on this quandary.

• The 2009 American Buffalo Gold Proof coins are still selling at decent levels with 749 of the 24-karat coins sold, bringing the latest sales total to 44,468.

• Interest in the latest First Spouse gold coin (Taylor) is growing with 261 proof and 320 uncirculated marked as sold. This more than doubles the amount sold in the prior week.

• The Lincoln Presidency Cent saw a nice increase selling 4,990 of the two-roll sets. Obviously, collectors are more interested in them with their mintages at the lowest level of any of penny design in decades. (See the final 2009 Lincoln Cent Mintages.)

Major coin sales numbers follow:

US Mint Collector Coin Sales

(Data compare previous to current Mint sales reports)

*Sold out or no longer available.

Click here for an entire listing of the most recent US Mint sales report.

Notable summaries of sales articles this week from CoinNews and sister sites follow:

• Margaret Taylor First Spouse Uncirculated Coin Sales Beat Proofs – FirstSpouseCoins.us
  Sales for US First Spouse Gold Coins jumped again, according to the latest United States Mint sales figures. The surprise was certainly the Margaret Taylor gold Uncirculated, which skyrocketed by 320. Last week its change was just 97. It even beat the Proof version, which gained 261. That’s not too shabby considering last week was 152 …

• US Mint Sales: 2010 Silver Eagles Start Strong – SilverCoinsToday.com
  Similar to last week, two of three US Mint numismatic silver products declined in demand, but the newly released bullion 2010 American Silver Eagle Coins enjoyed spectacular sales. Of the remaining three silver sets still sold by the United States Mint, only the 2009 Silver Proof Set improved as compared to …

The collector coin sales figures above have an "as of date" of Jan. 17, 2010. For an always updated reference of the latest articles, visit US Mint Sales.