Gold gains make a good week

Leave it to gold to put some excitement into the week.

It is vaulting toward $1,300 this morning, according to the Kitco website.

We are back where we were a year ago.

We have seen strong performances in June before.

Last year was but one example.

Gold moved higher and higher.

It finally hit a ceiling around $1,350 and spent the rest of the year giving the gains back.

Silver was even stronger last year, going up to over $20.

It is $17.70 now.

It needs to add nearly $3 to regain last year’s commanding heights.

This means gold is relatively stronger than silver.

It has returned to last year’s highs sooner.

Will silver follow?

We can only watch and wait.

Certainly the silver American Eagle bullion coin buyer’s strike seems to have ended.

Low bullion coin sales in February, March and April perhaps signaled silver’s more difficult path to higher prices.

Silver remains the precious metal of average people.

Their activities have greater influence on its price than on gold's.

While every coin collector would like to have a chest of gold coins, it is silver that captures our emotions.

Most people have experience of silver.

They own some.

They root for it like a favored football team.

Experience of gold outside of wedding rings is much less common.

But it is gold bullion that is making a move higher at the moment.

If silver follows along, that will help confirm the upswing.

If silver doesn’t follow, can gold retain its new higher ground?

That will be the question.

In the meantime, initial June sales of silver Eagles are at 229,000 pieces.

This compares to May’s 2,455,000.

Gold Eagles have seen only 500 ounces of Eagles sold so far in June.

Has the bullion coin buyer’s strike got a new target?

Whatever the answers to my questions, at least the old observation about bullion always weakening going into a Long Beach Expo is not true this year.

Buzz blogger Dave Harper has twice won the Numismatic Literary Guild Award for Best Blog and is editor of the weekly newspaper "Numismatic News."

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