For the last three years, the United States Mint has decided to do something strange.
Bullion.Directory precious metals guest post 20 January, 2020
By Nick Adamo
President at Bullion Shark LLC
The mint decided to release the Proof Silver Eagle and the Bullion Strike Silver Eagles almost simultaneously. In 2018, the release date was January 4th, January 10th in 2019, and January 9th in 2020. Each year the United States Mint begins shipping the new Silver Eagles right around the beginning of January to authorized coin and bullion dealers.
We have done an analysis into the correlation of the timing of the release of the Proof Silver Eagle and its respective mintage each year. Rare coin collectors will be quite pleased with the results.
As suspected, the United States Mint did collectors a favor by releasing the Proof Silver Eagle and Bullion Strike Silver Eagles back-to-back. The mintages for the 2018 and 2019 Bullion Strike Silver Eagle are 15,700,000 and 14,863,500 respectively.
Since 2009, the bullion version was notorious for its high mintages of over 30 million pieces. Bullion strike Silver Eagles from 2009 and prior had similar mintage numbers and are worth anywhere from $100-500. The proof version showed around 350,000 in 2018 and about 320,000 in 2019.
The Proof Silver Eagle mintages in 2018 and 2019 are even lower than the key dates in the series: 1993 and 1994. The 1993 and 1994 had mintages of 405,913 and 372,168 and are worth over 4-figures in perfect grade proof 70. Right now, one can buy 2018 and 2019 Proof Silver Eagles in perfect grade 70 for around $100.
Could we be looking at modern rarities in their infancies?
Why are we seeing such low mintage Silver Eagles? The answer is simple. Many coin collectors are either buying less of each type of Silver Eagle or are only choosing to buy one over the other.
It is also important to keep in mind that the Mint has also added a San Francisco Proof Silver Eagle to its product schedule since 2017. Collectors much spread their budget over more coins in a shorter time period.
Based on the mintage numbers of the Silver Eagles in 2018 and 2019, we could very well be looking at another low mintage year. Being that the United States Mint raised the issue price of the 2020 Proof Silver Eagle to $64.50, it is possible that the demand might be even lower than last year.
Although this may seem as a bad thing, modern coin collectors who do buy the piece may be very happy if they end up owning such a low mintage Silver Eagle.
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