Date for some older CCI .22LR ammo

[abigails&w]

Hi all. Here are some photos for this .22 LR ammo I am trying to date. All is CCI and marked as made by: "BLOUNT, INC. SPORTING EQUIPMENT DIVISION LEWISTON IDAHO 83501". Blazer 40gr, MiniMags and Stingers, later without stated weights, assumed 40gr and 32gr respectively.

Price labels on MiniMags and Stingers read:

$3.99 for 100 MiniMags (3.9 cents/round)
$3.50 for 50 Stingers (7 cents/round)

Any idea from what year this ammo may be?

[edit: thanks s&wchad and others who helped figuring this one out]

 

[Sevens]

From memory I was going to guess early to mid-1990's. Then I thought why not do a search to see when Blount, Inc took over Federal/CCI? A wiki page says 1985.

I'm still guessing early to mid-1990's on all the pictured ammo.

 

[s&wchad]

Yours are all marked Blount, so they were made after 1985. Someone may be able to narrow that down by the lot codes.

CCI was founded in the 1950's. Early boxes were marked Cascade Cartridge Company. Omark purchased CCI in 1967. Blount bought out Omark in 1985.

Stingers didn't come out until the mid 1970's.

These are some examples of their various markings.

This case came out of a friends estate. He had a gun shop for years and marked his ammo with the date he received it. This style of Blazer packaging was obviously still used in 1999.

I purchased cases of old CCI ammo from this estate and have shot a lot of it. It's really good stuff and I don't remember having and squibs or duds. I wish I could say that for ammo made in the past 10 years.

 

[desi2358]

The exact year would require someone who can read the date codes. I believe the guys saying roughly 1990's era are on the right track. We were still getting boxes in most of these styles in the gun shop in the late 90's and early 2000's. The Blazers were changing from the little loose pack boxes to a cardboard box with a slide out liner holding the individual shells around this time. The plastic box labels changed from the light blue to a dark blue around the same time. Of course in those pre ammo panic days there was no guarantee you were getting the latest production as ammo came off the distributor shelves to fill orders (and manufacturers may not have wanted to waste any older boxes found in their storeroom either). Looks clean and should all be good shooting ammo, nice little stash to have!

 

[Sevens]

This picture here is very compelling! Imagine someone marketing a product and that product's packaging clearly showing a known brand owned by some other company entirely that has nothing whatsoever to do with the product!

If you saw it today you could be nearly certain that it was some "arranged" attempt at product placement -- or worse yet, opens themselves up to some manner of liability. Especially with the extreme wokeism of the day "they pictured our product on evil extreme-right ammunition!"

Either way, I find this packaging very interesting and a very obvious throwback to a day long, long gone.

 

[s&wchad]

This picture here is very compelling! Imagine someone marketing a product and that product's packaging clearly showing a known brand owned by some other company entirely that has nothing whatsoever to do with the product!

If you saw it today you could be nearly certain that it was some "arranged" attempt at product placement -- or worse yet, opens themselves up to some manner of liability. Especially with the extreme wokeism of the day "they pictured our product on evil extreme-right ammunition!"

Either way, I find this packaging very interesting and a very obvious throwback to a day long, long gone.

I don't remember seeing bricks of Stingers back in the day. I only saw 50 round boxes on the shelves and they were pretty expensive. In the 70's, you had to sign for ammo and mail order wasn't an option.

I understand what you're saying, but I'm not sure how having such little regard for a product that you'd shoot full containers would constitute an endorsement. The big selling point of RC was the low price. If they used cans cans of Coke, Pepsi, Mountain Dew, Budweiser or Miller High Life, CCI would have received bomb threats!

 

[abigails&w]

So I tried some of this and.... WOW!

Shoot this evening few boxes of Blazer and a dozen of Stingers. This 30 years old or so ammo behaved better than any recent production .22 LR ammo I shot before, including CCI.

- Perfect ignition at first try, all rounds.
- Super clean.
- No sticky cases. First cylinders the spent cases just dropped free, did not need to touch the extractor. Never encountered this with recent production 22.

The Stingers felt a bit different, sounded more like rifle (shot with a S&W Model 617). They too worked perfectly. I'll have to shoot some new Stingers side by side to confirm, these old ones felt... different, in a good way (more powerful?). They too went super clean and spent cases dropped free.

s&wchad you got a treasure there with those cases. You are so right about the quality of this ammo. Now after seeing it myself, I'm amazed.

 

[Dfish1247]

I remember those mini mag boxes very well through the 90's when I was a kid. I sent gobs of those through a 10/22, nylon 66, daisy model 8, and a 144 lsa. Dad sent the 10/22 and nylon 66 down the road, I was bankrupting him allegedly,lol.

 

[sophie]

I don't remember seeing bricks of Stingers back in the day. I only saw 50 round boxes on the shelves and they were pretty expensive. In the 70's, you had to sign for ammo and mail order wasn't an option.

Here's a 500 round brick of CCI Stinger's from early 1980. I've got lots of Stinger's from those years. When K Mart would put them on sale I would load up on CCI. Always shot CCI Standard Velocity 40 gr lead in Smallbore Silhouette but bought lots of CCI Products. Lots of CCI Mini Mag 22LR too.

 

[Sevens]

I'm loving these pictures.

I wonder when the "penta-point" bullet went away?