Recently purchased a box of vintage 44 Special ammo in its box from approx 1916

I have no plans to shoot it, but would it be safe?

My biggest concern iOS that somehow all the powder would burn at once causing a ka-boom

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I would say too collectible to shoot.

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Shooting those cartridges is unlikely to be dangerous.

They are likely to work just fine. If they don’t, they simply won’t fire.

Acquired as collectible
But was wondering about the safety
A detonation as opposed to a strung out burn would be very bad

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I believe it would be safe but as said, too valuable to just shoot.
I’ve shot old .45 acp. and it fired of fine.
Those old ammo boxes are so cool!

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I have shot some vintage ammo from that and a little earlier era. All but one round fired. Some...many...cases split. But remember that ammo has corrosive priming. One of my old 1911s developed a bit of rust in the bbl overnight. But that was back east in Md with the 90% humidity. Cleaned up the next day but was surprised. Neat old box. Keep it intact and full

Some may fire or squib and lodge in the barrel, causing a dangerous situation that could damage the barrel. If I absolutely had to fire them, I'd pull the bullets and reload the cases with proper components. No one knows how or where they were stored. Too collectable to shoot especially in their original box!

From my experience if the powder is very old in a cartridge it breaks down and because it is broken it could possibly hang fire or not fire at all. Possibly the primer could fire and push the bullet into the barrel and that is never a good thing lol.

My sincere opinion is it would be safe to fire as to not blowing anything up but could just fizzle...

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My experience with ammunition of similar age is that a high percentage of rounds will have misfires. Those that do fire will produce original ballistics, indicating the propellant has not deteriorated. That was based on firing a large number of loose WWI military .45 ACP cartridges headstamped R A 18 (Remington Arms 1918) that I once came into at a very cheap price. I still have some of those. An interesting piece of additional information resulting from that test was the finding that the primers used were of a slightly smaller diameter than today’s Large Pistol primers, and new LP primers would not fit into the old primer pockets.