In less than two years, the Chinese Mint has increased the production of its 1 oz Chinese Silver Panda 1233%, from 600,000 per year to 8 million in 2012.
Even though this is certainly a massive increase in just two short years…. this may only be the beginning of something really big that is being planned by the Chinese Mint.
According to Louis Golino’s article “China Strives to Make Silver Pandas as Popular as American Silver Eagles“, we have just begun to see just how many Silver Pandas the Chinese plan on minting.
If we take a look at the chart below, we can see that the Chinese Silver Panda production figures have increased substantially since 2010:
According to Jim Orcholski who runs J & T Coins LLC Blog.com, quoted from the article above:
The main reason the mintage of these coins was increased so much starting last year is that it became legal in 2011 for Chinese citizens to own silver coins. This means that a lot of 2011 and 2012-dated coins remain in China.
Jim went on further to say:
Despite the major increase in mintage the coins are not getting any easier to locate in the U.S. Mr. Orcholski said supplies are tight and that he was only able to secure one-third of the quantity he requested. He added that his distributor was unable to say when more coins might be available.
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I had an email exchange with Jim over the past few days and I asked him what he thought might be the 2013 mintage forecast for the Chinese Silver Panda. He stated they he and a few other coin dealers thought it would be at least 10 million.
If the Chinese want to make their Silver Panda as popular as the American Silver Eagle, I would imagine they would want to increase its production to over 40 million eventually… and this may be just for starters.
We must remember the Chinese Population is three times that of the United States. Once silver becomes popular in China, demand for the 1 oz coin could reach an easy 75-100 million in a single year. Of course, I doubt this would occur in the next few years, but I could possibly see these sort of figures within the next 4-5 years.
This chart is part of my upcoming SILVER ARTICLE. It is only one aspect of many showing the HUGE INCREASE of SILVER INVESTMENT DEMAND…. over the past several years, and onwards.
![[Most Recent Quotes from www.kitco.com]](http://www.kitconet.com/images/live/s_silv.gif)
![[Most Recent Quotes from www.kitco.com]](http://www.kitconet.com/images/live/s_gold.gif)
Interesting article If only 5% of the 1.3 billion Chinese want this coin, there goes another 65MOZ. It would not surprise me to see China prohibit any foreign sales of the Panda, a beautiful coin. China’s gold purchases are like the Roach Motel. Gold checks it, but doesn’t check out.
Silver is most probably going to suffer the same fate. China will be a buyer and miner, absorbing silver and releasing nothing outside their borders. Rumors being what they are, China may already have that policy of keeping its silver in country.
AG I believe you’re right. I know for one that only counterfeit artefacts are allowed to leave China and I believe it is going to be the same when it comes to real gold and silver.
I own a sealed monster box (600 pcs) of 2011 silver pandas. They are selling for something fierce on APMEX ($56!!).
@ MeatEater, lucky you …… errm, ever thought about cracking that seal, yunno, …just in case there’s tubes full of lead. Kidding!
I’ve cracked open my Canadian boxes..spread the contents out on a large green baize card table, poured myself a generous measure of a very good single malt, put on a pair of white cotton gloves and counted them all back into their tubes, put the tubes back into the boxes, put the boxes back into the safe…..all the while smiling contentedly to myself. I slept very well that night.
I find myself regularly thanking the Divine One that I have been woken up to stacking the phyzz by sites like SD and that I am prepping to help my extended family through the coming dark days. Doc and all the helpful regular contributors on here also feature in my prayers of gratitude too.
@MaplesUK I’ve discovered the fundamentals of gold and silver thanks to YouTube videos. How did I discover? On October 2011, I was searching for the values of my old Canadian coins on YouTube. Then, I saw a side video recommending that we should all buy some silvers. I clicked it and at first, my reaction was “Why do I even need that?”. After watching multiple side videos, I’ve discovered that my dollars are losing its purchasing power. Then on November 2011, I bought my first silver piece and continued to do that since then. I’ve also accumulated a little bit of gold.
Or should I write fake gold and silver? lol
Premiums between the eagles and the pandas certainly do trend different.
<img src="http://img6.imagebanana.com/img/obc7pggt/Selection_138.png” height=”350″ />
Great find SRS! Looking forward to reading your the full article. :D
Does anyone really trust made in China gold or silver?
arsenal009… fakes are produced everyone. We can’t forget about the big RUMOR that the U.S. Govt produced a great deal of fake gold bars salted with Tungsten.
Once the Chinese public silver demand takes off and they purchase 50 million a year of their own Silver Pandas… it takes 50 million more ounce of silver off the global market.
That’s how I see it.
Here we go. We send the PBOC near worthless treasuries. They send us near worthless silver and gold coins. It’s a race to the bottom to see who can spew the largest amount of worthless stuff
Pandas are cute, but they are messy eaters and poop, so I’ll just stick to acquiring pre-1965 silver that is effin REAL!
My preference as well. I also like the smaller more fungible denominations. just in case they become my only useable currency.
I also like to accumulate junk silver since you can at least play with them because they are already tarnished. I can’t play with my pure silver pieces because they will be tarnished easily. You can also use junk silver for small denominations after the collapse of the fiat system.
Several months ago a story came out about a Chinese bullion Ponzi scheme that totaled almost as much as Madoff. This story’s gone dark but the notion that the Chinese would scam their own people with paper bullion schemes makes me surmise that the fake gold bullion bars and quite possibly fake silver coinage would become a common occurence. Thinking along these lines, there would be a bifurcation of the precious metals.There is something about precious metals that brings out the best in most people. It drags along the bad players who see PMs as a means to take advantage of the common man.
The cheap fakes for the common folks. The real stuff for the upper crust. The poor could flash their bling. The elite would have the real thing. Scams of this nature may be a sign of the times as the Chinese rotate hundreds of millions of ounces of silver and hundreds of tons of gold to their vaults from the West. I can’t speculate how this will shake out for the Chinese but nothing good will come of this for the west, particularly if we are forced to settle for the tungsten fakes while the Chinese and Indians enjoy their riches.
China is shipping fakes of everything so I agree, what is to keep them from shipping fake pandas?
The Chinese citizens weren’t allowed to own silver coins before? I didn’t know that and I wonder why weren’t they allowed to do so. It’s good that there are a lot of mintage of silver Pandas so that this way, the premiums of them are going to drop. I always wanted to own some of these silver coins because they have nice designs.
Yep, this was the case prior to around 1998. Generally Chinese nationals were discouraged from making profits on numismatic coins. But since then, the coin market in China has exploded – and now there is a big push for everyone from the lowly commoner to the rich elite to get into silver and gold.
Just walk down any main street in China, and you are likely to see a gold and silver shop. Similarly, virtually every bank in China will sell you gold or silver Pandas too.
You can hear from one of the Chinese Officials (Vice President of Chinese Rarities and Antiques) here, how Pandas are becoming more and more popular in China among the general population.
“With improvements in the standard of living for common people, more and more people are choosing coins, stamps and antiques as an investment vehicle. There is so much potential for future growth.
Regardless of high or low class, demand is strong (for collectibles) from all people groups (in China).”
That’s why I only buy pre-2011 NGC/PCGS high grade Panda’s, which have tremendous numismatic potential but can still benefit from spot rises.
It’s been said many times in various places, that collecting 2011, 2012 and 2013s Pandas is a waste of money, since
i) The mintage of 8million Pandas is huge.
ii) Therefore future appreciation will be nil or negligible.
The problem with the above negative reasoning, is that it fails to consider the potential market size of the Chinese population.
The size of the Chinese market is huge, 1.4billion people is massive. The mintage of 8million 2013 coins is very small. Only one person in 175people is going to be able to have one (and that’s assuming equal distribution, and non-world wide sales).
In earlier years, there were possibly only a handful of Panda collectors globally. But today, I think there are possibly hundreds of thousands of Panda fans around the world.