I've shot some pretty old center-fire ammo before....Looking at my .22LR supply...I've probably got some that's at least 20 years old...and I bought it new. Assuming that it's kept dry....let's say in ammo cans inside a closet....how long would typical .22LR ammo be good for?

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'Merica!

The oldest .22LR ammo I have is 25 years old and that was just sitting in a garage on shelf that was not insulated and no climate control. It shoots just fine. I now store all ammo in cans and inside the house now. If stored the way you suggest I would think it would last until the ammo can seal deteriorated and took moisture. It's hard to say.


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Many decades at least

I spilled a box of Remington Thunderbolt in the glovebox of our
van once. It sat there for about four years through winters that got to 20 below and summers where the temps outside the van hit the 90s.
I took some out from time to time and shot it with no trouble.

Finally, before we gave the van to our daughter I cleaned all the ammo out of the glovebox. It all fired, and was as accurate as other Thunderbolts that had always been stored inside. Also sounded and
felt the same as the stuff that was stored in better conditions.

Even rimfire ammo is tougher than people might think.

I've shot 50 year old .22 and it all went bang.

BLM

8-10 years ago I bought a bunch of bricks,Rem,Fed.CCI,at a local farm auction.The owner had written dates on each brick and all the dates were between late 1977 & mid 1978.They all worked fine & I still have a couple left that I still shoot from time to time.

It probably has a shelf life longer than most humans. Real problem is if the bullets get a buildup of lead oxide on them, then they shouldn't be used. It generally prevents chambering anyway. Not too long ago I fired up several boxes of Western .22 Short Standard Velocity that dated from the late 1950s which worked flawlessly in my Hi-Standard Olympic Rapid Fire pistol.

The biggest enemy of ammo is heat. DO NOT store ammo in a hot attic if you want the ammo to last a long time.


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That's why a lot of bulk surplus ammo is stored in Spam cans...Spam itself has a shelf life of approximately 247 years...well, that's what I've heard....

...but not quite as long as Twinkies.

I've shot .22's from the 1940's and 1950's and all was fine, but I did have a brick of ammo from the 1960's that had white matter all over the lead bullets that prevented them from being loaded into a cylinder. I did try cleaning some of them but deemed it was more trouble than it was worth. Just have the Brick on a display shelf as nostalgic curio.

Shelf life - forever, if stored in a cool, dry place.


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My uncle obtained the Ford dealership in a southwest colorado town in the late '50's.

While doing some remodeling, he discovered a package in one of the walls.

It contained 2 boxes of 22 short ammo along with the dated (1917) shipping lable from Montgomery Wards to a long deceased resident of the town.

Uncle couldn't resist opening one box of ammo and trying it. Worked just fine.

Last year I sold the ammo and lable, but not untill after I tried a couple rounds from the open box: worked fine.

So the shelf life of 22 ammo is at least 99 years.

With the hoarding that has occurred over the last few years, one should expect this to be a regular topic of conversation for the foreseeable future.

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- Post No Bills -

watch out for green stuff around the brass/bullet point.

It seemed a lot more common to wax coat .22 bullets years ago. Some still do, but not all. They were also boxed in tight boxes of 50 rounds, that didn't get shaken around much.

Not sure if un-waxed bullets would stay good as waxed. Also, the lose bulk packaging, like Remington Golden, have a high percentage of lose bullets, which would allow humidity to take it's toll on the powder.

I have shot a few hundred rounds that were about 40 years old, and not stored in any special manner, all without any problems.

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Scoundrel & Ne'er-Do-Well

A good friend has some Winchester ammo that his dad brought home from the army after WWII. Brown box stuff for the army. His dad said he put all the trunk of his car would hold and came home. My friend still has several bricks of this and it goes off like it was made last week. So what age is that 70???

The most common priming composition used prior to the mid-1920s was chlorate-based. Mercury Fulminate primers died out by the turn of the 20th century due to very short shelf life and other problems. The US Military continued to use chlorate primers until the early 1950s (except in .30 Carbine) primarily because it had a long shelf life reliability under all storage conditions, long after almost all US civilian ammunition had switched to lead styphnate priming. But it does rust bores if the gun is not properly cleaned after firing. Properly stored lead styphnate priming is probably as stable as chlorate priming. I have fired lead styphnate-primed ammunition (both rifle and handgun) from the 1930s which was still 100% sure fire.

A long, long, long time.

That sounds right to me also.... let's call it ..100 years!

20-year-old .22 Rimfire can't possibly be any good. Send it all to me and I'll be happy to "dispose" of it for you.

I have a few boxes of Win. Super Speed circa 1939. I fired one partial box in both rifle and pistol recently with no misfires. Surprisingly accurate also. Don't know how it was stored for the first 60 years or so but I have had it in a G.I. ammo can for at least 15 years so 20 year old ammo should be fine.

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S&W Armorer
Lost in the 50s

It is actually only three months. I am telling everyone that so they stop buying it all and hoarding. That's my story and I am sticking to it, can't hurt.

Storage. I wouldn't give a second thought to 40 years. Read this thread and see what some others have experienced. Myself, I'd do some testing around sixty or seventy years, wouldn't be surprised either way.

My grandfather bought a new Colt Official Police in 1947 and a few boxes of ammo for it, Winchester. He gave my mom the gun and a box of ammo that year and she shot a peeping tom with it. My folks died in 2008 and while cleaning out the old house, we found several boxes of Gramps' ammo in a sock drawer. I shot it up and it worked fine. It was 60 years plus old. That's the oldest rimfire I have shot; centerfire, much older.

Utah has a very dry climate. It doesn't get very humid and it was probably always in either Gramps' house or my folks'. No special storage conditions.

I have found that, generally, if ammo's original box looks good and the cartridges in the box look good, the ammo is usually safe to shoot. Badly stored ammo, affected by heat and/or humidity, usually gets weaker as it ages, rather than stronger.

But don't take my word for it!

Only problem I've observed is corrosion on the bullet. Waxed bullets are OK, but unwaxed bullets will corrode.

Picked up a little over 11k .22short around 1980.Don't have much use for it.My daughter started shooting last year and is doing a great job of depleting my stock.Even though the ammo is older than she(32 in Oct)none went click instead of bang.And she's shot aprox 3000 up to now!
Qc.

When Spring cleaning out my garage I discovered on the back shelf three 50 round boxes of Olin Super X plated .22 lr ammo that I bought sometime in 1974. Took them to the range and two boxes fired perfectly but the third box had about 20% misfires. No difference in storage, go figure.

Also found a box of Federal Hi-Power .22 shorts with a Kresge price tag. Kresge was the dime store that later morphed into K-Mart in the early 1970s for all you youngsters. Will try those out some day.

".. but the third box ..". As an X-target shooter, I remember having to clean my C*** Woodsman after a box of ammo was thrown at the targets. Possibly grime in the mechanism? The third box really shouldn't be any different than the other two unless there was a problem in production. Were they the same lot number?

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Mike Maher #283

All three boxes of Olin Super X were from the same package of ammo which I bought with my Ruger Standard 22 sometime in 1974--the gun cost $85. Didn't keep the old ammo boxes.

The price tag on the box of 50 Federal .22 shorts says 69 cents.

Ruger .22 at $85! 50X .22 rds at .69$.If I could only finish building my time machine!
Qc