Gold Eagles star in month of July

Do gold American Eagle buyers know something the rest of us don’t?

July sales of 35,000 ounces is the highest total since January clocked 58,500.

The one-ounce coin alone registered even closer to the January number at 31,500 compared to 36,000.

For four months in a row, sales figures have been rising.

That’s a trend. It looks solid.

March bottomed out at 3,500 ounces, which is one-tenth of the July sales number.

Bargain hunting could be the reason.

Eagle owners certainly know that the price of gold is down since 2018 arrived.

The precious metal is even down from its price a year ago.

This morning, the Kitco website showed bullion at $1,218.90 an ounce.

Add the 6 percent markup, and you can walk away with a brand new one-ounce gold American Eagle for $1,291.39 on the APMEX website.

Somebody has been stocking up since March.

In fact, the April-July sales total is actually 74 percent of all the gold American Eagle coins sold this year.

The positive gold trend might be influencing silver Eagle purchases.

The 885,000 sold in July continues a two-month uptrend in silver Eagle sales numbers.

Can two months make a trend?

This trend is neither as long nor as strong as the gold Eagle trend.

The July figure is the highest since April's 915,000.

It is more than double the May figure of 380,000.

June was 435,000.

April-July sales are just 46 percent of the silver Eagles sold in 2018.

This shows the renewal in gold demand is almost twice as strong as silver's.

Should that surprise us? Not when you consider the threat of trade war.

Silver is an industrial metal as well as a precious metal and monetary metal.

It is being influenced to a degree by the same declining demand fears as platinum.

A simple economic slowdown that is not actually a recession might keep the inflation hedge buyers away from silver.

For now, gold is preferred to silver.

Let’s check back after the August numbers are in and see if that is still the case.

Buzz blogger Dave Harper won the Numismatic Literary Guild Award for Best Blog for the third time in 2017 . He is editor of the weekly newspaper "Numismatic News."