New Silver Coin Trends
With Millennials slowly coming into positions of wealth, their spending dollars have told us about a lot about where the market of silver coins are headed. We have seen many trends in other consumer products that tell us Millennials are willing to spend more money on items that have a unique value that goes beyond the product itself.
The reason I have isolated Millennials in this article is that they are the next wave of dollars who will control the majority of purchased goods in most sectors of the market as the baby boomer generation settles in on retirement.
“ Consequently, the buying process for them (Millennials) is a time of enjoyment, where loyalty to the brands they purchase is relative.”
Brands that have had giant followings from Budweiser to Yankee Candle have seen dramatic shifts in consumer spending. This trend is moving away from the giants of the industry and towards craft or mission driven products.
Many of these top companies made business decisions to purchase these smaller, consumer focused companies in order to control the moving of the market. One great example of this would be the food and drink industry.
Craft beer companies have been coming out of the woodworks and are finding wild success. They cannot compete with the price or production of the big players but they offer something the big companies cannot; A custom tailored experience and product that feels good to support.
The food and drink sectors of the market are racing towards a pull of a diversified marketplace. Ten years ago, we had half the options we have now and ten years from now, many of these companies may disappear but many of these companies will stick.
The hard truth is that the public often times does not know what it wants until it is an option they can try. Silver coins are no exception. If we look back ten years, a small percentage of the coins currently on the market were in existence. Bullions standards such as the American Silver Eagle, Canadian Maple, and Krugerrand were in high supply.
There were a hand full of companies making rounds but as far as government issued bullion, the diversity in the market was small. So where are we now and where is the silver market growing.
Currently there are only a small amount of unique series that have been around 10+ years such as the Kookaburra and Chinese Panda. Some countries would produce commemorative silver coins like when a nation hosted the Olympics but most series of old had the same boring artwork every year. As many of you know now, unique series are popping up every month that highlight various nations, cultures, histories, animals and other themes all approved by governments throughout the world.
This is such a rapid and dramatic change. Some great examples would be the EC8 series in the Caribbean. This is a series that highlights eight nations in the Caribbean and every year, each of the eight mints a new coin. The Komsco mint of South Korea highlights the cultural history with differing series while the nation of Australia seems to have new coins every week from the Royal Australian Mint and Perth mint over a myriad of themes.
If you ever spend time on APMEX, Bullion Now, or any other online distributor of metals, you will see so many unique coins. I truly believe this is where the market is going. They days of just collecting silver to sit in a box just incase the markets crash are dwindling to the new wave of collectors who value the culture, history, and stories behind the coins.
These are the buyers who care much less about a premium because they feel like they are getting something more than the value of silver weight just like those who are willing to pay more to purchase craft been over Budweiser. Most of these new series are also taking note to buyers liking coins that they feel are rare, as producers are minting many of these series in quantities of 50,000 or less.
This, in my opinion is exactly where the market is heading and countries like Niue, Tokelau and Tuvalu are making giant revenue jumps because of it. These Pacific Island nations mint many different theme coins in smaller batches that sell like hotcakes. Themes range from animals to pop culture icons and often have mintage amounts of 10-50 thousand. What is crazier is that the selling of these coins can attribute to 1-3% of the GDP of these nations.
The market of silver coins is solving the algorithm of purchasers much like Google and YouTube as world mints tailor their designs to themes that have demand, while driving up that demand by lowering mintage amounts. Only a small percentage of the world’s silver is used for bullion coins but if this trend keeps moving towards large profits, governments may allocate more and more silver for bullion production as it will make more revenue for their country’s bottom line.
All of this being said, there is no better time than the present to start a hobby of collecting silver coins and with websites like www.HobbySilver.com , it has never been easier. The markets are full of diverse products and with financial support of your investments, the future is even brighter.
