Today, May 29, 2012, the United States Mint released the El Yunque 5 Ounce Silver Uncirculated Coin, the first of five 2012-dated America the Beautiful 5 Ounce Silver Uncirculated Coins.

Despite recently lower silver prices, its sales price of $204.95 was expected for the most part since the United States Mint was and is still offering older 5 ounce silver coins for the same price. A noticeable change that may have been expected but not predicted was the newly announced mintage of 25,000 for the El Yunque coin — a mintage that will presumably be set across each of this year’s four other upcoming silver coins based on the series’ history.

As a reminder, each of the debuting 2010 America the Beautiful 5 Ounce Silver Uncirculated Coins had mintages of 27,000. They soon sold out, which supported a view of more coins for 2011. That indeed happened as the mintage level for last year’s coins was raised to 35,000.

However, the highest sales attained so far for any of these silver coins has been for the 2011 Gettysburg National Military Park issue which has current sales of 18,284. The Chickasaw National Recreation coin was the last of the 2011-dated coins released, and its sales are expectably lower at 14,143.

Clearly, at this point, there is no indication that new America the Beautiful silver coins can or need to support last year’s 35,000 per coin mintage. Thus, the latest mintage for the El Yunque 5 Ounce Silver Uncirculated Coin was lowered to the aforementioned 25,000.

For reference, the following table offers the latest sales figures as of May 28, 2012 for the currently U.S. Mint for sale America the Beautiful 5 Ounce Silver Uncirculated Coins.

Next week the debut sales will be available for the El Yunque 5 Ounce Silver Uncirculated Coin.

U.S. Mint collector products may be purchased directly at http://catalog.usmint.gov/ or by calling 1-800-MINT (872-6468).