BULLION BARS AND COINS

In a new initiative, The Perth Mint will announce total ounces of gold and silver it sells every month as minted products.

The reason is that I’ve noticed we’re sometimes compared to the U.S. Mint which declares coin sales weekly. Some people have interpreted this as meaning we do not have similarly powerful reporting systems.

Although we have chosen not to go quite so far as the U.S. Mint in this respect, our initiative should help dispel this mistaken idea.

Moreover, it will provide clients with valuable insights into the success of Australian precious metal products worldwide.

I realise it is logical to ask that if we can provide this data monthly, why does The Perth Mint wait longer to announce its final coin mintage figures?

This single issue generates more questions than any other.

There are several factors involved in the answer.

We have a more extensive range of products than most other mints – in the bullion sector alone we have two gold series with nine different coin sizes, and three silver series with seven different coin sizes – some with limited mintages.

These products are marketed through our retail and wholesale channels, the latter including a small number of banks and primary distributors with whom we deal on a secure consignment basis.

Issues surrounding returns from consignment partners (or even the possibility) extend the timeframe required to calculate our final mintage figures.

In the light of the tremendously busy year we’ve just experienced, allocating staff resources to preparing and auditing these figures has been an issue for us.