With an availability that was measured in days, instead of months it is amazing to find out that the 2009 Fractional Gold Eagles bullion coins had near-record sales for the year.
Since their introduction in 1986, the Eagles have normally been available without restriction for most of each year. As most collectors and investors know, this was not the case for the 2010 fractionals.
Instead, the Mint only released the one-half ounce, one-quarter ounce, and one-tenth ounce Eagles on December 3, 2009. This late introduction and the astonishing demand for gold helped to push the fractionals to a one-day record sales level. In less than 24 hours, 345,000 coins were sold.
With a tight blank availability, the Mint announced that the 1/10 ounce size inventory was depleted after the first day, and the 1/4 and 1/2 ounce coins were extremely limited placing those two sizes on an allocation program. Even the allocation process was not enough to prevent a sell-out of available inventory of the two larger fractionals within a few more days, and the Mint was forced to suspend sales.
Then, on December 14th, the Mint released its remaining inventory of fractionals freshly struck from the limited supply of blanks it had in-house. But, within a week, these too had sold out, and the Mint announced it would not strike anymore.
So, in just a matter of days, the Mint had sold their entire mintage of the fractionals bringing their total number to what you see in the chart below.
2009 Fractional Gold Eagle Bullion Mintages |
|
| 1/2 oz Eagle | 110,000 |
| 1/4 oz Eagle | 110,000 |
| 1/10 oz Eagle | 270,000 |
In comparison to previous years, more 2009 fractionals were sold in that short time than the Mint saw last year from their 2008 series. In fact, the 1/2 and 1/4 ounce coins for 2009 ranked number 5 over all since their introduction in 1986.
At this time, the Mint has not announced an availability date for the 2010 series of fractional Eagles, but you can bet when they do, there will be some elevated interest.
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