It’s another less than stellar month for sales of gold and silver bullion from the Perth and United States Mints but while they’re showing big drops from January, this isn’t unusual based on the previous two years of figures.

The Perth Mint’s numbers include minted bars as well and while January sales were down on the past two years, February numbers are much closer to what’s gone before, matching last year almost ounce for ounce. Gold has risen by almost a third from the disastrous 23,174 ounces sold in January, and even though this is the first time in the last three years that February has been better than January, numbers are still down by 32% on 2014. Silver is holding it’s own against 2013 and 2014, but yearly sales to date are still down by a quarter.

American Gold and Silver Eagles both dropped to their lowest levels for a February since we started tracking in 2013, but both trends follow previous years because they come off the high January sales spurred by the release of the new-dated coins. It’s pretty hard to tell where sales will go from here as there are no reliable trends to be ascertained from the last two years. Clearly current economic conditions will be the key here.

The facts remain that numbers are still desperately low for gold as an absolute figure and while not as bad for silver, that’s tracking lower than 2014 by 20%. With gold sales at just 18,500 ounces, April 2013’s staggering 209,500 ounces must seem a million miles away.