Gold, silver bullion sales dropped in April

Editor's note: Due to technical problems, the sales figures are unavailable at this time.

What a difference a month makes, at least as far as bullion sales go.

In the May 9 issue, I noted how slow platinum and gold bullion sales were in the month of April. Not much changed over the final week of April.

While gold one-ounce sales experience a slight upward tick, going from 17,500 coins on April 24 to 22,000 by month?s end, half-ounce and quarter-ounce categories didn?t budge. The only significant rise was noted in the tenth-ounce category, where sales jumped from 5,000 coins to 25,000 in a week?s time.

Still, overall sales of gold bullion were down significantly in April, compared to March numbers. In March, a total of 74,500 gold bullion coins were sold. Take a look to right. See that 54,000 number. Pretty small by comparison, isn?t it?

And as far as platinum goes, the rollercoaster ride continues. After selling 5,300 platinum bullions coins in March, the Mint reports only 500 were sold in April.

That would seem to indicate that the fluctuating prices for gold and platinum metals are dampening customer enthusiasm for these pieces.

Yet, the rise in silver prices hasn?t slowed sales of silver one-ounce coins. In fact, sales of the silver one-ounce pieces were up in April, hitting 1,395,000. In March, a total of 1,072,000 silver one-ounce coins were sold.

If you have any thoughts on what happened to bullion sales in April, I?d love to hear them. As always, you can e-mail me at peter.lindblad@fwpubs.com. If you have any questions for me, that?s the place to go as well.

Preliminary bullion sales were submitted for May. All we had as of May 2 was a total number of sales for the month for silver one-ounce coins, which stands at 25,000.

To include the final numbers for April bullion and the new May figures I removed the Nevada state quarter final sales numbers. Considering Nebraska?s state quarter has been out a few weeks now, it was probably overdue.

With Colorado?s release just around the corner in June, Nebraska has a ways to go to catch up to Nevada. The most telling number is the two-roll set category, where a total of 68,135 have been sold so far for Nebraska, compared to 84,229 for the Nevada quarter.

As usual, sales of the Nebraska quarter have dropped off sharply since its release in early April. So, it?s going to be a tough uphill battle for the Nebraska two-roll sets to reach Nevada levels. Same goes for the 100-coin bags, which were only about 7,000 off as of May 1. But considering how far sales are dropping off, it?s going to be hard for Nebraska to get there.

Thanks to everybody who?s put in their two-cents worth regarding the state quarter production box. We?re toying around with the idea of shrinking the text so it?s not so prominent. We?ll consider all of your suggestions. Some of them were quite detailed and gave really good ideas.

Stay tuned for news on plans for the Colorado first-strike and launch ceremonies. They should be coming shortly. Don?t forget. The first-strike is scheduled for later this month. So, budget wisely so you have enough disposable income to buy all the rolls of Colorado quarters you want.