(JH MINT Sales and Purchase Volume Data)
Silver Stock Report
by Jason Hommel, May 18th, 2012
Here’s the link to tables of JH MINT Sales data without commentary.
http://jhmint.com/reports.html
People
who are ready to buy silver and gold often ask us, “Which should I
buy?” and “What’s the most popular?” It’s the one ounce silver round!
It’s the clear winner.
The sales volume data shows what’s
popular, and by how much. To my knowledge, no other bullion dealer has
published such data ever. Thus, this is very important industry data.
It should be linked, and discussed and cross referenced by those who
would comment on the physical bullion market.
The data reveals much. One of my favorite points is that it exposes a lot of fraud.
Don’t
ever believe it when fraudsters who vault your bullion in the form of
1000 oz. bars, claim that one ounce rounds are not popular, or that it’s
“too difficult” or “too costly” to manufacture these popular silver
products.
Note, the data covers the period from August 2010 to April 2012, which is 1.75 years, or a year and 9 months.
We
sold a total of $33.9 million, and bought a total of $13 million worth
of silver and gold from the public. We have excluded purchases from
wholesalers, or sales to refiners, which would have offset the
difference, and would have helped to balance the numbers. So, the
numbers reflect what the public is buying and selling and doing and
choosing to do, not what dealers buy or sell or have to do to serve the
public demand.
Overall, it’s important to note that silver one
ounce rounds are the most popular item, both in sales and purchases.
Since they are the most popular of purchases as well, this says that
silver one ounce rounds were the most popular item of the last ten to
twenty years. Since sales of silver one ounce rounds were 23.6% of all
sales, and purchases were 11.6% of all purchases, this says that they
are only growing in popularity. We didn’t sell “twice as many as we
bought”, we really sold $8 million worth of one oz. rounds, while we
bought $1.5 million, which is 5.3 times more. To me, that suggests that
one oz. rounds are 5.3 times more popular now (over the last two
years), than they were “historically”.
Every now and then, people
will sell the 100 oz. silver bars, or sell gold coins, just to convert
into one ounce rounds, as people are growing in their awareness of the
need to have a fungible, popular, barterable unit of tradable precious
metal.
I believe this is a good trend. It shows the growing
awareness of the importance of fungibility, and it is helping the silver
one ounce round to gain that fungibility that comes with being the most
common unit of trade.
The sales data is showing that silver one ounce rounds are “becoming money”.
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