16/8/2013: US Mint gold sales: July 2013

It has been some time since I updated the data on sales of US Mint Gold Coins, so let's take a quick run through the data for July 2013.

• US Mint gold coins sales in July 2013 stood at 50,500 oz, dow 11.4% m/m (though there is little point looking at monthly figures which can be volatile) and up 65.6% y/y. The sales were close to historical average at 57,239 oz and below the crisis period average (since January 2008) of 88,694 oz.
• US mint sales of coins in July 2013 stood at 90,000 coins, down 20.4% m/m and up 97.8% y/y. This compares agains 100,286 coins sold on average per month over historical period and 124,731 coins sold on average per month over the crisis period.
• Average volume of gold sold per coin in July 2013 stood at 0.561 oz/coin, which is 11.2% ahead of June 2013 and 16.3% behind July 2012. In historical comparatives, July sales were behind 0.59 oz/coin monthly average over the historical period and well behind 0.77 oz/coin average for the crisis period.
• 24mo rolling correlation between volume sold (oz) and gold price (end of month spot price) stood at 0.009 in July 2013, up on -0.045 in June 2013 and ahead of -0.09 average rolling correlation for the historical period covered by data, but virtually identical to the 0.01 average rolling correlation for the crisis period. In basic terms, the zero correlation between gold coins sales and gold spot price remained intact in July 2013.

Charts to illustrate:

Overall, analysis above confirms a short-term trend toward increased demand for gold coins, driven by changes in prices. This trend is more directly evident in 6mo sales data (next post). In total coins sales, there is a nice reversion to the up-sloping trend (first chart above), while oz/coin sold remains below the longer-term up-sloping trend line, potentially reflective of speculative purchasing running at more subdued volumes (second chart). Per third chart, there is a clear negative correlation between demand for coinage gold and the price of gold, suggesting some 'buying-on-the-dips', although this correlation is weak (last chart above) and is getting weaker (in absolute terms). There is a long-term trend toward positive (or at least much less-negative) correlation between the price of gold and coins sales.

Tune in for the H1 2013 cumulative data analysis next.