I got a bunch of 40 or 50 year old shotgun shells when my father in law died. Kept in the garage in some hot and humid places. They killed a fair number of doves.

Ammo is durable.

I've shot .22 LR that was over 70 years old without any trouble. 98 of the 100 rounds went on the first strike, and the other two went on the second strike.

Stuff lasts damn near forever.

I have fired 1927 45 acp,depends how it was stored.

Make sure its dry and cool storage.

About 10years ago I fired some 45acp original ball lot # 35 /dated 1917....... Had been stored many years in a attic left over military issue in 2 original issue boxes but most were loose. All rounds that I tried functioned properly. .............. drill sgt.

Stable temp and humidity, relatively dry and not to hot or cold... cartridge ammo is effectively forever...

Observe the neck and primer seal, and overall condition. If you wouldn't eat it, don't shoot it.

quote:

Originally posted by arcwelder:
Stable temp and humidity, relatively dry and not to hot or cold... cartridge ammo is effectively forever...

^^^^This

I fired off a mag of HST 147gr that has been in my truck since around 2017.
Stored in the console, temps in the truck were at the very least 140° in the Phoenix summer heat and made several trips north to Minnesota to temps -20°.
Every round fired without a hitch, no hang fires, failures to feed or extract…nothing but bang every time.
Modern ammo is pretty damn resilient.

Today I shot about half a box of Winchester 38 Special that dates to the 1950's. All went BANG. This is from the box that on one side is solid yellow, solid red on other side, and 75% red/25% yellow on top.

I accumulate and shoot old ammo as a hobby, and the only ones I have had not to fire were some WWII GI .45acp. But many other GI .45acp of same vintage has fired just fine. It was only that one box.

Earlier this week I deer hunted with 75 year old Remington .30-06 ammo, which I have tested, and previously killed a buck with.

I've shot all manner of both commercial and surplus ammo across many handgun and rifle calibers dating back into the 1920's at least.

I can think of one USGI M2 ball round I had that was a dud. I had a bit of 9MM or possibly .45ACP pistol ammo with red sealer on the primers that wouldn't go and more recently, some poorly stored 30 year old Russian .32ACP that went bang, but short cycled in a Colt 1903.

Other than that, I was once given a LARGE box of mixed stray 12GA shells with a LOT of paper shells in the mix. I think most of the plastic shells I tried went bang and almost none of the paper shells went off and I gave the rest away as "collectables".