The Perth Mint has just released its final set of monthly gold and silver sales figures for 2014, and they reinforce the pattern built up by the United States Mint figures of a general trend towards declining volumes. Perth’s figures include their bullion coins and minted bars, whereas the US Mint includes just their Eagle coins.

Gold sales at the Western Australian Mint have reaffirmed what we’ve already seen elsewhere; a substantial decline in ounces sold. A drop of 34% from 749,930 ounces down to 516,709 is startlingly close to the drop of 38.5% experienced by their American competition. The Royal Canadian Mint only publishes figures every quarter and we’re still some months away from seeing Q4-2014, but after the first nine months, Gold Maple Leaf sales were down from 867,000 ounces, to just 474,000, a huge 45% fall. Clearly 2014 isn’t going down as a flagship year for gold coin sales.

Perth’s silver sales fared a bit better, down just 12%. They were up 4% at the United States Mint, but there’s been some recent speculation that sales have been inflated by a single huge buyer that’s stockpiling silver. What truth there is to this remains to be seen, but for the moment, silver is holding its own, not surprising given its relative undervaluation compared to recent years and the historic gold:silver ratio.

It could be that the lower sales at Perth are more representative of the bullion coin market overall, as nearly all their product has a semi-numismatic facet to it, whereas the American Silver Eagle is overwhelmingly a high- volume silver stackers coin. With Perth releasing several new silver bullion coin products this year, it makes you wonder if the total for 2014 could’ve been even lower without them..