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Well, you got me with that statement. If the operating costs to produce 22 Mag and 22LR are the same
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The .22 mag should be compared to premium .22 LR ammo, not the bulk type because of the quality difference.. The .22 mag ammo is enough different that it requires different tooling, with fewer end items sold to amortize against investment and overhead. A rough rule of thumb is that doubling the numbers of items sold reduces the price about 10%, and that worked on radars, jets, and guns for the Air Force procurement. One reason the few B2s we have now cost so much is we never went into production, producing only a handfull of what are essentially hand-built prototypes.
When you consider the tighter specs for .22mag ammo and compare 2 billion+ end items to maybe a million or 2, the price difference fits the model fairly well. .22 mag ammo has cost about 4 times comparable .22LR ammo for the last 4 decades.