I'm inclined to agree with Ed Steer's take in that it's nothing more than accounting trickery intended to mask record demand for Silver Eagles in the 2010 calendar year. This snip from GWR's post of Ed Steer's morning column:

"The U.S. Mint had a sales report yesterday. However, it's blatantly obvious that these sales actually occurred in December sometime... but they didn't want to add them to the 2010 totals. December is normally the biggest sales month of the year...and the reason it wasn't in 2010 was because the mint didn't report the sales in a timely manner. That was deliberate.

Anyway, they reported selling 9,000 ounces of gold in their gold eagle program, along with 1,696,000 silver eagles."