As the global stock markets continue to crash, demand for precious metals will continue to increase.  Already, the U.S. Mint had to ration Silver Eagles sales due to a shortage of silver blanks.  Sales of Silver Eagles in a little more than a week have reached nearly five million oz.

While Silver Eagle sales in January are normally very high compared to the rest of the year, initial sales this month are starting off with a real bang.  The Authorized Dealers purchased all of the four million oz of Silver Eagles allocated last week and have already taken delivery of 950,000 of the 1 million oz allotment this week.  There are only 50,000 Silver Eagles remaining until next week’s allotment (Source: CoinNews.net).

As I am writing this article, the Hang Seng stock market is down 701 points and the Nikkei is off 518.  I would imagine the U.S. stock indices will be deeply in the red when they open, unless the magicians at the Fed and U.S. Treasury decide to bring out their bag of tricks.

Regardless, investors are becoming quite worried about a market that makes no sense whatsoever.  Even though many investors didn’t understand the fundamental valuations of the market over the past 2-3 years, when the indices were rising, they held their noses and went along for the ride.  However, now that the U.S. and global markets are in free-fall, things could get down right ugly in 2016.

Forget The Paper Price Of Silver… Look At The 20 Year Change

While many precious metal investors belly ache about the falling paper price of gold and silver, demand for the physical metals continues to rise…. especially silver.  To get an idea of how much more physical silver investment is currently taking place, let’s look at the following chart:

In 1996, total Silver Eagle sales for the year were 3,466,000.  Now compare that to the 4,950,000 Silver Eagles sold in the first half of January.  We must remember, Silver Eagle sales in 2016 started on January 11th.  So, in just six working days (this Monday was a holiday), the U.S. Mint sold 43% more Silver Eagles than all of 1996.