Good as gold

Gold and silver buyers clearly loved the Federal Reserve yesterday.

With the nation’s central bankers deciding not to reduce their monthly bond buying from the $85 billion level, buyers have piled into gold again.

The price has popped by 4.5 percent according to the numbers on the Kitco website.

It is up by roughly $60 from yesterday’s close to trade at $1,367.60 a troy ounce.

Silver has rocketed higher by over 8 percent, trading at $23.29 a troy ounce.

Are happy days here again?

It is probably too soon to tell, but it certainly is a marked change from the price declines since Labor Day.

Now we will have to see if there is follow-through buying of gold American Eagles to confirm that this is more than just the financial big boys rejiggering their market position.

Gold Eagle sales have declined every month since the April high of 187,500 one-ounce gold Eagles. August sales were a paltry 9,000 pieces.

Thus far in September the number is 6,500. That’s hardly more than 1 percent of the total of 603,000 sold in this calendar year.

What would be a significant sales bounce?

It is probably better to wait a few days to even attempt to put a number on it.

Silver Eagle sales no matter what happens show much less variation simply because the Mint rations supply, so we don’t really know how many might be sold at any given time if the Mint had an unlimited supply.

So a gold focus it is for the next few days.

Buzz blogger Dave Harper is winner of the 2013 Numismatic Literary Guild Award for Best Blog and is editor of the weekly newspaper "Numismatic News."