US Mint Sales Remain Strong
According to Ed Steer over at Casey Research, "it was no surprise to me to see a big sales report from the U.S. Mint yesterday. They sold 15,500 ounces of gold eagles...2,500 one-ounce 24K gold buffaloes...and a very chunky 1,025,000 silver eagles. Month-to-date sales are as follows...65,000 ounces of gold eagles...10,000 one-ounce 24K gold buffaloes...and a whopping 3,325,500 silver eagles. Based on retail bullion sales that I know about in various parts of North America, September will be another strong month for the mint..."

While Central Banks are selling paper IOU's for metal to force the price down, those in-the-know are using the lower prices to accumulate the real thing. This just is another further illustration of the fact that the precious metals market is actually "A Tale Of Two Markets," one real, and one imaginary. And it is a rare opportunity in life that you can buy something real at artificially low/imaginary prices.

Don't look for this little price decline to linger very long as the paper market will soon be overwhelmed by the physical market. Coin premiums are already starting to increase again as those who have physical gold are becoming less willing to let it go at these ridiculous prices.

I'll close with this from Ed's commentary this morning:

"The Perth Mint has been very busy this Monday morning with a lot of buying [but also some selling], however buying is outweighing selling by a fair margin [pun intended]...and the decrease in the AUD/USD has taken some sting out of the drop for Aussie investors.

"I see this sell-off driven by leveraged “weak hand” money. In contrast, average investors [the real smart money] are looking at this as an opportunity to buy in or top up at cheaper prices. These buyers are “strong hands” and have been the ones who have been driving the trend all these years.

My bullion dealer here in Edmonton had another record day in bullion sales on Monday...even larger than the record day he had on Friday. It was wall-to-wall buyers all day...and the phone was ringing off the hook. Nobody sold an ounce of anything.