Good article

https://mattstoller.substack.c...-firepower-what-high

thanks for posting that -- confirms a lot of what we have suspected

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Thanks for posting. I had wondered about how these 2 companies controlled most of US market and seemed unable to respond to demand.

Not getting enough hunting ammo out for hunting season in most calibers and even shotgun after 18 months seems, well.... seems more inept than greedy.

curious what the 'behind the scenes' word is on importation

ie PRVI, swiss, PMC, Australian, Mexican (Aguila), Brazilian (magtech / cbc) etc sources

probably affected by the port slow downs further curtailing availability

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This was posted a few days ago???

Where are they finding these prices? "5.56 used to be $.33 a round, now it's closer to $1 a round." (I paraphrase.)

A dollar a round for precision or defensive ammo, maybe, but can find brass cased 5.56 for around 50 cents all day long and steel cased is hovering right around that mystical 33 cents.

Is it as cheap as pre-pandemic? No. But it's far, far cheaper than a year ago and pretty much readily available everywhere.

From what I'm reading there , I'm going to continue with my present strategy . (I do not reload so that's nowhere on the radar .) I'm not going to sit on my hands and wait for the price to creep down to something resembling pre panic numbers . Right now all of the calibers I need are pretty much available and I have built up my inventory to the level that I'm no longer concerned with shortages . Those greedy bastards have gotten over on me for the last time . I learned my lesson the hard way after one of the school shootings when everything disappeared from the shelves . AR's , magazines , ammo , etc and I was in a bad position . Won't happen again ! I even have a NIB unfired AR squirreled away just in case . My advice is to suck it up and build your stash . Yeah , prices may drop a dollar or two per box at some point but everything else is going up in the meantime .

quote:

Originally posted by Oat_Action_Man:
This was posted a few days ago???

Where are they finding these prices? "5.56 used to be $.33 a round, now it's closer to $1 a round." (I paraphrase.)

A dollar a round for precision or defensive ammo, maybe, but can find brass cased 5.56 for around 50 cents all day long and steel cased is hovering right around that mystical 33 cents.

Is it as cheap as pre-pandemic? No. But it's far, far cheaper than a year ago and pretty much readily available everywhere.

Yeah.

A lot about that article stinks.

I’m buying training 9mm for .30 a round. I try to buy when I can catch free shipping. And the price keeps falling. We won’t see .18 a round ammo again, but .22-.23 is probable despite fear porn like this.

quote:

Originally posted by selogic:
From what I'm reading there, I'm going to continue with my present strategy.

That's my plan.

My strategy is I replace what I've used as relatively "good" deals appear. Sometimes "pre-replace" when I know I'm going to use some. Essentially my goal is to maintain current reserves.

E.g.: A decent deal on a small quantity of 10mm FMJ popped-up on another forum, recently. I snagged it, because I know I'm going to be running at least that much through my 10mm 1911 pretty soon.

I do reload. And, I've never stockpiled ammo. I've always bought it if I needed it. That's going to change.

Maintaining a reserve is, in my opinion, vital.

When we had our first primer shortage years ago when Slick Willie first got elected, I got caught with my pants down. A year later, primers and everything else was back to normal and I stocked up and set an arbitrary number for the amount of bullets, primers and powder I wanted to keep on hand.

So, I replenish it as I go and maintain my minimum. What constitutes a good minimum is an individual thing. Two guys in my weekly shooting group thought they had a good minimum but they started to run out of primers a couple of months ago. Maintain your reserves for what you think will hold you for a realistic time frame.

It is all about supply and demand for an item that has inelastic demand. Companies are allowed to raise their gross margins if they want to and in some cases it makes sense especially if others are going to buy everything you make so sell at huge markup to take advantage of the super high demand. Of course there are increased costs recently for Covid related expenses including possibly much reduced productivity, paying employees a lot more money in pay rates and overtime, training new employees, more government regulations, and transportation expenses which would mandate raising gross margins to maintain bottom line.

Retail prices to the end user on ammo are coming down over time but I agree that we never see the prices we saw in 2017-2019 again when manufacturees had to lower their gross margins to sell their ammo.

quote:

Originally posted by Oat_Action_Man:
This was posted a few days ago???

Where are they finding these prices? "5.56 used to be $.33 a round, now it's closer to $1 a round." (I paraphrase.)

A dollar a round for precision or defensive ammo, maybe, but can find brass cased 5.56 for around 50 cents all day long and steel cased is hovering right around that mystical 33 cents.

Is it as cheap as pre-pandemic? No. But it's far, far cheaper than a year ago and pretty much readily available everywhere.

The article is poorly written. That dollar a round they are referring to is talking about hunting rounds as I read it as they specifically mention hunting in the sentence prior.
So I would consider it fairly accurate.

quote:

But talk to anyone who enjoys hunting, and they’ll tell you one of result is the ‘Great Ammunition Shortage of 2021.’ "5.56 ammunition for an AR-15 used to be about 33 cents a round," said Mark Oliva, director of public affairs for the National Shooting Sports Foundation

Prices have become nuts as we all know. My favorite .270 and .30-30 blasting ammo is PPUs rifle line.
Prior to this that was $10-$12 a box. .30-30 if one can find it is $20+ and the only .270 I have seen was $33 a box!!!
Nearly triple for .270

Let’s talk about primers.

Gunshow primers before Brandon in these parts was $30-35/1000. Now people are asking $80/1000 and up.

Meanwhile, powder when found had gone up about 20%.

I’m very salty about that. Presently I’m pretty decently set and bought when I saw the writing on the wall. But I’m pissed that it still hasn’t returned to some level of normalcy or availability.

Pretty much everything I shoot is my own hand loads.

The current pricing pleatau we are seeing right now may get shot to shit if the EU and NATO nations decide that Russia neeeds to be politically punished by an economic embargo. I don't like paying 28-33 cants per round for my 9mm and .223, but it sure beats the crap out of paying close to $1 per round for blasting ammo.

I reload. I maintain a pretty healthy reserve of both loaded rounds, and components. In addition, I keep factory rounds also. I like to have at least 2k factory for every caliber we use. I just ordered 1k of 9mm to replenish stock. Found it for .33 a round. Highway robbery, but I like to have a comfort zone.

I stocked primer, powder and projectiles after the BHO cluster mess. I ended up selling 11000 primers at pre stupid prices to standardize on CCI 41 and CCI 34 for rifle and CCI LP/SP fot pistol.

I may have to cull my powder stash as well.

quote:

Originally posted by SgtGold:
The current pricing pleatau we are seeing right now may get shot to shit if the EU and NATO nations decide that Russia neeeds to be politically punished by an economic embargo. I don't like paying 28-33 cants per round for my 9mm and .223, but it sure beats the crap out of paying close to $1 per round for blasting ammo.

Didn't Brandon already ban the importation of Russian ammo?

quote:

Originally posted by SIG228:

quote:

Originally posted by SgtGold:
The current pricing pleatau we are seeing right now may get shot to shit if the EU and NATO nations decide that Russia neeeds to be politically punished by an economic embargo. I don't like paying 28-33 cants per round for my 9mm and .223, but it sure beats the crap out of paying close to $1 per round for blasting ammo.

Didn't Brandon already ban the importation of Russian ammo?

Brandon banned the issuance of any new inport permits. Anyone with an approved permit can continue to import up the their time\volume limit.

The potential economic embargo issue may never materialize. There are a lot of moving parts in that, and there is also a potential tie in to the situation between Taiwan and China.

That's good to know. I don't shoot it, but options are a good thing.

I used to work for a trade association for which Olin was one of two members. Olin pulled support and I lost my job (but am MUCH happier now). Ammunition, industry-wide, 2 years ago was a pretty tiny portion of Olin's business. I expect it has gone up, but they are first and foremost about chlor-alkali. Strange company too.