22 ammo prices
 

I was just down in my gun room, trying to make sense out of the mess and figure out about how many 22s I still owned when I came upon a Winchester box. It was the yellow brick (not road) kind. And clearly written on the one panel was $6.80. Sure it was top notch stuff back in the day, Hollow Points, no less. Guess I should have stocked up.

But inside it was mixed ammo. 5 boxes of Remington Hollow points and 5 more of Federal Hi Power hollow points. The Remingtons had individual price stickers of 85 cents. I'm guessing 1960s. A dollar just doesn't buy much these days.

It wasn't all that long ago - 6 or 7 years maybe, that you could still get a brick for $8.99. Times sure have changed over the last 6 years!

I just saw a box (50 rd) of .22 mag for $22.95!!! I thought it was expensive at $6.50.

I've got some Remington, yeah I know they are ****, with the price tag still on.........$7.95. They are the bulk packed "golden bullet".

Purchased a Federal 525 bulk pack today for $22.95. Shop also has bricks of Blazer for the same price.

Back in 06-08 I was buying Federal 550 packs at 7.99 and then went to 8.99 at Wal-Mart. The local RKO (Rural King Ohio) had boxes of 50 on sale for .79 after hunting season during that time.

When I was a kid the manufacturer figured how much the raw materials for a quality product cost him.
He then added overhead, employee costs, advertising, shipping and etc.
He then added a fair profit.


Nowadays, Marketing experts and computers design and redesign the product until it is on the edge of unusable and will wear out with minor use or simply degrade in 6 months to the point it becomes unusable.
It is placed on the market priced well above its consumer value to determine what the market will bear.
Many ploys are used to get the product into the hands of consumers. Rebates, discounts, bundling, leases, inflated shipping/handling are but a few of the scams employed.
Once a value, them maximum price the market will allow, has been established, the marketeers go back to work devising ways to make the product even cheaper to increase the profit margin.
They must lay awake at night thinking up new scams to beat the consumer out of yet another dollar. They seem to get some perverse thrill out of scamming the consumer rather than giving them a quality product at a fair price.


It seems to me that at some point the whole scheme will come tumbling down.

A Model 29 was $140 between 1955 and 1960 -- price didn't go up, and our currency was stable. It's not that the price of ammo is going up necessarily, it's also that the value of money is going down. It's worthless paper.

In 1960 a Python was $125, and 5 grand was a good annual salary.

A few years back I picked up this nice MDL 48-- bought a couple cases of ammo the next couple gun shows I went to. Sure glad I did. :)

http://www.fototime.com/49A6D579BA3CCC4/medium800.jpg

LGS around me have no .22 ammo for sale. You can buy 2 blue boxes of the 525 round Federal Champion stuff for over $150 plus $20 shipping on GB. Full 5250 cases for over $800 plus $40 shipping. I have not been to a gunshow since all the panic buying, what is .22 bulk ammo selling for at the shows?

Just came from a gun show, a guy was asking 105$ for a 550 round brick, I left it in his good company.

Before the 2008 elections I used to buy Federal Champions 510 bricks of 500 for $5.95 at Academy sports here in Austin, Tx. Seemed like a decent price. Now, they have NONE for sale. Times have changed. The American public has been disarmed without any laws being passed. Just the threat was enough to clean the shelves. Almost like flipping a switch.

I took along 15 of the 550 bulk packs. I also had 8 of the older Winchester bricks of 500. My son brought along maybe a half dozen 550s, and our table partner also had maybe 10 bricks. We priced it too low at $55 and we were the cheapest in the room. That resulted in all our 22s b eing snapped up well before noon. Others who wanted to look at their ammo longer priced it at $65 and $75. We kind of left early because we were sold out. At 2:00 there were still vendors with their $75 boxes. I'd guess the $65 sellers hated us, but they probably also sold out. Looks to me like the panic is in full swing and getting stronger, not weaker. I think I could have sold 50 more at our prices. We had lots of lookers who told us they'd be back because they wanted to walk the room first, sure we'd still have some in a couple of hours. Didn't happen like that.

Our other ammo wasn't selling at all. 9mm at $35 drew little interest. 38 S&W the same thing. Anyone with .223 for under a dollar a shot was selling fast, too.

On the bright side...if there was one, it seemed like the loading supplies guy was doing a booming business. I stood in line for maybe 20 minutes to pay for 4# of 2400 and 8# of 4350. The guy had lots of other powders, and even primers except small. He had a few boxes of small rifle with some advertising that it was for .223 at $54.+ per 1000. He also had primed .223 cases, but I forget how much. It seemed like the guys were pacing themselves so as not to get tired. They were spending more time BSing than anything you might imagine as work. One lazy WalMart clerk could have move the line along 3 or 4 times as fast.

He did have 3 boxes of A-max 80 grain for $120/600. This is a seller who normally has table after groaning table filled with .50 cal cans of bullets. Not today.