The U.S. Mint made an unusual request last week. In a press release dated July 23, the bureau literally begged Americans to start putting coins back into circulation by spending or depositing them. As you may have noticed, people just aren’t making transactions with coinage like they used to. That’s especially the case now in the age of the coronavirus. With many people sheltering-in-place, billions of dollars in everyday purchases are being made online that in normal times would have happened at the cash register. This is creating a national coin shortage.

The best performing precious metal for the week was silver, up 17.79 percent. Silver had its biggest weekly gain in nearly 40 years and could keep soaring. The metal hit its highest level since 2013. Mike McGlone, commodity strategist at Bloomberg Intelligence says the white metal could eventually climb to $30 an ounce amid a broad-based bull market for precious metals. McGlone predicts the metal will stay between $20 and $25 for an extended period before moving higher. The Global X Silver Miners ETF had a ninth straight day of inflows and the iShares Silver Trust saw five consecutive days of money flows.