PRIMERS NOW

[Sevens]

Some of this is absolutely supply issue.

S&B formerly had a chunk of the market, that factory blew up and no longer produces primers. Wolf/Tula had a share and those are fully embargoed now and do not come in to the country.

That leaves the known stateside sources — the bulk of which goes directly to build factory ammo, which we can all agree went totally scarce for a year and a half and is slowly rebounding.

A massive conspiracy theory? I don’t think so. But a genuine, tangible drought in the product? I say yes.

 

[Sevens]

If people wanted to strike a blow for lower primer prices, then offering them for sale at prices lower that those claimed as being unreasonable might deprive so scalpers of sales and help the market get back to a more reasonable level and for the rest of us to only buy just what we need until things get back to some sort of reasonable.
Anyone?
Yeah, that's about what I thought.

It’s easy to spot the inept who haven’t learned from ANY of the (many) previous component and ammo droughts.

For my buck I am absolutely doing my part — I am NOT selling primers at $100 or $120 per thousand. The only primers I have sold in decades has been to friends who I have helped get started in the game and in the last two years, that has been at $5 per hundred.

Any handloader that has no components right now is either brand new to handloading or has never been through a gundemic or is some version of lazy/foolish/dense.

Now let’s see the next crying thread where folks just don’t have any rimfire ammo.

 

[LostintheOzone]

There is no conspiracy to short the primer market by slowing production. That just plain doesn't make any business sense. If you have the capacity to manufacture primers and the market exists, there's more money to be made by making and selling more primers.

The manufacturers don't have the production capacity anymore because of labor shortages. That's happened to many manufacturers. Starline is a good example. They hardly have any brass for sale anymore because they don't have enough people to run their machines. Ever see the now hiring post on their website? Does anyone think they're producing less as a scheme to make more money. That's laughable. I just bought a bunch of their 44 spl. brass directly from them for a modest price. I haven't seen any since and that was 4-5 months ago.

My guess is the primer manufacturers are short staffed and what little production there is goes to build ammo. There's many more shooters that buy ammo than reload it, probably 10/1. So where's the market there?

The American work force has left the building for one reason or another. Covid probably has a lot to do with it but people just don't want to work for $17/hr anymore. Inflation eats up your desire to work and still not have enough to pay the bills.

 

[BC38]

@BC38
You actually bought all that powder for only $20/lb? Man, are we going to see your picture hanging in the Post Office?

Seriously, that was one heck of a day for you. I would never believe that could happen but obviously it did. Wow, I guess that guy hasn't heard anything about what has been going on the past few years.

The M629 Classic DX new were around $1,199. I've seen them online going for more than that today up to $1,250 and one sale was more. An additional Dillon 550 loaded up too along with a scale and tumbler? All that for $1,000? Yowza!!!

Nothing like that has ever happened to me. Way to go BC38. You got all that for at least half the price it's going for today. You are my hero lol...

That's the value I placed on it when evaluating the deal. If you look at my list those are all pre-pandemic prices for the components. Today's prices are 2x-3x on all of that stuff. I mean, when was the last time you saw primers for 2-3 cents each? Even at those kinds of prices the reloading supplies were worth over $1,200. Add the Dillon and the gun (in box with VC paper but no tools or docs) and you're still somewhere north of $2,500.

If you value all the reloading stuff at today's prices the package is probably over $5k. I don't value it that high because I already have enough reloading supplies that I would never even consider paying today's prices. I would never sell any that I have at today's prices either - I'll keep what I've got just in case the prices never do come down. I figure they will eventually, but I'm not a betting man so I'm not selling what I have for a "profit" based on the hope/belief/theory that prices are going to come down significantly.

The funny part is that finding all this was total luck. I stopped at a garage sale, looked around and asked if they had any sporting goods - like firearms or ammo. The guy said yeah, he had a bunch of reloading stuff and a couple of guns he wanted to sell. I gave him my number and told him to put together a list with prices and call me. He did and we did a little haggling and that's what I got for $2,250.

I haven't found too many deals that good. A couple maybe, but not many...

 

[kbm6893]

So let's say you're right, they are "intentionally shorting the market". Exactly how do they do that? There's only a couple of possibilities.

1. They have intentionally idled their equipment.
2. They are still producing but stockpiling in a warehouse.

Either would cost them more than just making as many as they can and shipping them. You can drive the price up by reducing the supply, but in manufacturing businesses doing that can also drastically drive up your cost per unit as well. If they were truly "greedy" they'd make as many as they could and sell them at the current prices which are now being determined by demand.

It also ignores several other common practices in manufacturing such as supplier contracts which need to be fulfilled. The absolutely worst thing you can do in manufacturing is cut your output intentionally. Nobody does that. It ignores possibly opening up your market to new competitors, like Expansion Industries, and more foreign competition.

I think this problem is 90% demand and only 10% supply. I think the surge in demand since COVID isn't fleeting. It could take a while for new capacity to come online. A decent recession would help choke demand. Maybe next year.

Companies ramp up production to meet demand all the time. Just as easy to slow it down a bit. Would even save them money. Less money spent on employees while more money made for the product.

Where are they? None of the small shops near me have had any in. Even the big shops don’t have shops stocked like they used to. The reloading community hasn’t exploded like first time gun owners have. Over 2 and a half years into this. Nothing else is unobtainable. Guns everywhere. Ammo everywhere. Primers? Nowhere. I just checked Brownell’s and nearly everything out of stock. How can there be hoarding if you can’t even find them to hoard?

 

[bluetopper]

No matter how good of a deal you got, some will chime in and tell you a deal they got better.

 

[ACORN]

My buddy and I stopped in a shop after the gun show and they had CCI small pistol magnum primers for $69.95/1000.
Maybe the end of the drought is coming.

 

[ArchAngelCD]

My buddy and I stopped in a shop after the gun show and they had CCI small pistol magnum primers for $69.95/1000.
Maybe the end of the drought is coming.

Maybe the drought end is coming but the high prices are still with us. Granted, $70 isn't over $100 but still, $40 would be better, no?

 

[ACORN]

Maybe the drought end is coming but the high prices are still with us. Granted, $70 isn't over $100 but still, $40 would be better, no?

That’s a no brainer, but I think we all know that $30/1K primers are ancient history. I think the market will settle at a $50-$60 floor.
I could be wrong, just ask my wife.

 

[stansdds]

Good to hear that primers are showing up and at less than $100+/1000. Given the rate of inflation, $40/1000 is not going to happen unless there are millions upon millions of unsold primers just sitting with retailers and filling warehouses.

 

[max503]

My buddy and I stopped in a shop after the gun show and they had CCI small pistol magnum primers for $69.95/1000.
Maybe the end of the drought is coming.

I would have bought a brick just because.

 

[glenwolde]

Companies ramp up production to meet demand all the time. Just as easy to slow it down a bit. Would even save them money. Less money spent on employees while more money made for the product.

Where are they? None of the small shops near me have had any in. Even the big shops don’t have shops stocked like they used to. The reloading community hasn’t exploded like first time gun owners have. Over 2 and a half years into this. Nothing else is unobtainable. Guns everywhere. Ammo everywhere. Primers? Nowhere. I just checked Brownell’s and nearly everything out of stock. How can there be hoarding if you can’t even find them to hoard?

There's no scenario in manufacturing where you can make more money by making less product. I spent my entire working lifetime in manufacturing and I know exactly two guys who thought it was possible. Both their careers ended shortly thereafter.

What you ignore is the high (relative to service businesses) fixed costs manufacturers have in plant and equipment. Those costs are there regardless of the amount of production. They have these fixed costs (plant & equipment, administrative, etc) and they have the variable costs of manufacturing labor and materials. They like to call manufacturing labor "variable" but the way most companies operate it is actually more like a fixed cost. But don't get me started on that.

Every manufacturer has a break-even point and they know exactly how much they have to produce to cover their fixed costs every month. After that point, everything over the variable cost falls straight to the bottom line.

Where are they? They are going into loaded ammo.

Here's what Vista said about its Sporting Products division:

"Sales rose 40 percent to $511 million, driven by strong growth across all calibers. Volume was the largest contributor to growth and pricing to a much lesser extent."

VISTA OUTDOOR REPORTS FIRST QUARTER FY23 FINANCIAL RESULTS - Jul 27, 2022

Vista is a publicly traded company, if that statement above is inaccurate they can be prosecuted for making a material false statement to investors.

Also note they are splitting up the company. That's interesting.

 

[glenwolde]

Here's some more interesting stuff from a VSTO earnings call transcript:
(note to moderators: this is publicly available information and not copyrighted)

"The key changes we have made include: replacing over $185 million of ammunition sales from the Lake City Army Ammunition Plant that we had to sell at or below cost, with close to $400 million in revenue from our acquisitions of Remington and HEVI-Shot. The ammunition that these two brands produce are both higher in margin and in much more stable categories, which are much less price sensitive. With Remington, we acquired the company who led the industry in irrational pricing behaviors. We have secured multi-year primary agreements with OEM customers at much more favorable profit margins. We are the clear leader in shotgun shell manufacturing with a large installed base of youth shooting. With HEVI-Shot, we acquired the leader in non-led ammo for future expansion. We have modernized our largest factory in Anoka, Minnesota to take cost out in every aspect of manufacturing. We have secured major law enforcement and government contracts at much more favorable pricing than in prior years. And we have not added any overhead in the past two and a half years.

And we aren't done improving our factory efficiencies. Our Remington facility in Lonoke, Arkansas is running at roughly two thirds the efficiency levels of our Federal and CCI plan. However, we see a clear path to matching those efficiency levels by reducing cost per round significantly. Externally, the most important structural change is that our market has grown by 16 million new firearms owners over the past two plus years, and they're a much more diverse and active group of users than before. Ammo stock piling was much more prevalent three to five years ago. Today, it's all about consumption. The drivers of that consumption are changing as well. Politics have historically played a major role in purchasing behaviors. By contrast, recent data shows that the growing field to table movement, increases in home ownership, expanded interest in outdoor activities and desires to increase personal safety are driving high participation rates well above historic levels. With respect to innovation our new products, which include Federal’s high overall target load, 30 Super Carry and Remington's Core-Lokt tip, are driving consumer demand and external recognition. A recent study from South Lake Associates, one of the nation's most reputable outdoor market and consumer research firm, recognized Federal as the most purchased rifle and shotgun shell ammunition, along with CCI and its Blazer sub-brand for rim fire and handgun ammunition respectively."

 

[BE Mike]

I don't know. I think that an over 300% price increase since before the election is outrageous.

 

[kamloops67]

I just paid $120Can for 1000 federal gold match large pistol primers
I’m not short on primers but I’ve been going through them About 150/week
Just trying to keep stock up
I saw an ad on “Gunpost” offering 5000count boxes of SPP for $2000! Firm
Obviously didn’t engage the crook but holy cow someone is out of touch with reality ( I hope)

 

[kamloops67]

I also just paid a$1 a piece for new 44 spl brass
I need it , and it’ll last a long time but jeez … it hurts lol

 

[Skeet 028]

I've been lucky finding reloading components...maily at gun shows. Even an occasional box of primers. As far as in gun shops...When Ihave seen them they were usually CCIs and the were either SPM OR SRM. Don't know why the mag primers but I have bought a few. They averaged out at about 75 per 1000. As far as primer prices...the new wholesale is MORE than 40 dollars. I did buy some NOS Rem 7 1/2s for 45 dollars. A friend from Md told me Friday he and his wife were celebrating their anniversary by antiquing/uniquing in Pa. Went to Shyda's(Lebanon) and got an 8 lb H335 for 210 bucks... Don't know prices now but it has been kinda hard to find. He said they had shotshell primers and some metallic but didn't buy any...oh and lots of lead and jacketed bullets!

 

[BC38]

Here's some more interesting stuff from a VSTO earnings call transcript:
(note to moderators: this is publicly available information and not copyrighted)

"...With Remington, we acquired the company who led the industry in irrational pricing behaviors...."

I find this particular statement very interesting...
Can you say "bucket 'o bullets"?
I recall buying a couple of 750 round "range buckets" of 9mm for $69.99 a bucket - right before the most recent shortage started.
Wonder if that could be the "irrational pricing behaviors" that they are referring to?

 

[glenwolde]

I find this particular statement very interesting...
Can you say "bucket 'o bullets"?
I recall buying a couple of 750 round "range buckets" of 9mm for $69.99 a bucket - right before the most recent shortage started.
Wonder if that could be the "irrational pricing behaviors" that they are referring to?

That could be an example. That's quite the statement they made about Remington but I know what they mean. I've seen it a few times. Incompetent management that doesn't understand their costs often resort to playing with pricing trying to "fix" things. HA! Let's sell it below cost and make up for it with volume!!!

When you see a competitor making pricing decisions that make no economic sense, you know they've lost control. You did your job. They're toast. You win. Given Remington went bankrupt and Vista ended up with them that's the way it worked out.

 

[BE Mike]

As far as primer prices...the new wholesale is MORE than 40 dollars.

If that is the case and that's the first I've heard of it, then retailers are making over 100% profit!