In 2023, the performance of precious metals varied, with gold showing a significant increase, silver making a very modest gain, platinum experiencing a solid decline, and palladium seeing a substantial decrease in value.
On Friday, gold for February delivery fell by $11.70, or 0.6%, to settle at $2,071.80 an ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange.
"The ship is moving towards calmer waters, so to speak – a lower rate environment, which means a lower dollar, and so gold should do better," Reuters quoted Marex analyst Edward Meir.
Gold prices inched 0.1% higher this week, registering their third consecutive week of increases, following gains of 1.6% last week and 1.1% in the week ending Dec. 15. For 2023, gold prices jumped by 13.5%. On Wednesday, the yellow metal logged a record settlement at $2,093.10 an ounce.
Declining for the fifth time in six sessions, silver for March delivery gave back 28.6 cents, or 1.2%, to close at $24.086 an ounce. Silver prices dropped 2% this week, following gains of 1.7% last week and 3.8% in the week ending Dec. 15. For the year, silver edged up nearly 5 cents, or 0.2%.
In other precious metals, both on Friday and for the week:
-
April platinum shed $14, or 1.4%, to close at $1,009.20 an ounce, reducing its weekly gain to 2.8%.
- Palladium for March delivery lost $30.90, or 2.7%, to finish at $1,109.30 an ounce, resulting in a weekly drop of 9.4%.
When assessing their performance in 2023, platinum fell by 6.8% and palladium sank by 38.3%.
US Mint Bullion Sales in 2023
On Friday, the U.S. Mint did not publish any changes in bullion sales. On Thursday, the bureau reported new bullion sales, marking only the second occurrence this month. The data indicated increases in American Eagle gold and silver coin sales, and it included a negative adjustment for American Buffalo gold coins.
The table below presents a breakdown of U.S. Mint bullion products sold, with columns indicating the number of coins sold (not total ounces) during different time periods.
| US Mint Bullion Sales (# of coins) | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| This Week | October | November | December | 2023 Sales | |
| $50 American Eagle 1 Oz Gold Coin | 2,500 | 97,000 | 40,000 | 15,000 | 924,000 |
| $25 American Eagle 1/2 Oz Gold Coin | 0 | 7,000 | 6,000 | 1,000 | 102,000 |
| $10 American Eagle 1/4 Oz Gold Coin | 0 | 18,000 | 16,000 | 0 | 198,000 |
| $5 American Eagle 1/10 Oz Gold Coin | 5,000 | 30,000 | 55,000 | 15,000 | 675,000 |
| $50 American Buffalo 1 Oz Gold Coin | -7,000 | 36,500 | 14,000 | 5,500 | 387,000 |
| $1 American Eagle 1 Oz Silver Coin | 157,000 | 3,938,000 | 2,378,000 | 525,000 | 24,750,000 |
| $100 American Eagle 1 Oz Platinum Coin | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 12,700 |
Silver flat, but danged if the mint kept raising price and lowering metal content.
The nature of the beast. Kind of like layoffs a few days before Christmas.
How else can management afford to hand out luxury trips and tvs and Christmas bonuses if they don’t fire or lay off everyone that made it all possible, especially surviving black friday up til xmas
Happy New Year people!
I’m wondering Dazed, how many Tubman gold coins are you planning on buying? Every time you want to ponder the evils of slavery, you can look at your DEI gold coin, with that lovely portrait of Harriet. I’m going to pass on this opportunity so that our black coin collectors can acquire these soon to be sold out coins. I’ll bet Magic Mike is drooling waiting to present these on HSN. I had to chuckle at the Mints email I received stating to ‘Make 2024 your best year of collecting’!
I get one mint mailing a year, I think around October. They already know to skip the black history month, LGBT pride month, DEI and white guilt offerings. I wonder if you get the gold tubman will they discount a gold 2017 lady liberal piece. Perhaps they’ll have professional athletes sign the graded labels. I wonder if they’ll change the waiting room to looting lobby to bring the level of authenticity to it. I always had a question. How did tubman know which homes would help her. It isn’t like she went door to door asking if they could keep… Read more »
Dazed We do seem to want to reimagine America into Africa or South America. Neither one of those continents has country’s blossoming in democracy…allegedly. I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that MAGA is considered some kind of curse word, like fu*k or sh*t, never to be uttered in civil conversation, well unless you watch tv these days. I know civilisations change and get swept away in the course of time, but how quickly our country is degrading is astounding to me. We no longer have any moral fibre, corruption is running rampant in all of our institutions,… Read more »
Can’t wait to see how free healthcare works out for the California taxpayers for illegals. I’m sure they can suppress the actual numbers til “election” is over. If anyone can fudge numbers it is them. Wonder why Sam Backman fried getting off so easy. Wonder what happens to epsteins book. Probably edited to show only Republicans and maybe a couple troublemakers dems. Also, 4 mph is on flat even ground. Not thick soggy mud, or quicksand like environments or trudging through the swamps or mangroves. Naked and afraid shows us that it can be time consuming especially in thorny environments… Read more »