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reloading supplies
stevecrea
Member Posts: 486 ✭✭✭
I just returned from buying powder, bullets, and ammo from Walmart. While they do not have a broad selection, they have a decent selection of Hornady and Sierra bullets in many calibers, Reloader 22, IMR 4350, IMR 4831, and Varget.
Walmart must be paying its bills and is able to get decent shipments of goods in.
Theory: The hoarding, bubbling, mania, and hyperbole began to pick up when some of the sporting goods retailers were behind on their bills and were not getting ample shipments of goods. They attempted to cover themselves by cock and bull stories about hoarding, future taxes, ammo taxes, blah, blah, blah.
Go to Walmart. They may or may not have what you need, but they have some items.
Walmart must be paying its bills and is able to get decent shipments of goods in.
Theory: The hoarding, bubbling, mania, and hyperbole began to pick up when some of the sporting goods retailers were behind on their bills and were not getting ample shipments of goods. They attempted to cover themselves by cock and bull stories about hoarding, future taxes, ammo taxes, blah, blah, blah.
Go to Walmart. They may or may not have what you need, but they have some items.
Comments
in my cleaning i found several boxes of sierra bullets all different cailbers and sizes and weights. are they worth listing on gb. also i have a huge flat of lead 45 cast bullets. how much weight can you ship in a flat rate??
Jim
Must be a local thing. The Walmarts here and the last place I lived do not carry any reloading supplies. And finding ammo on their shelves is more miss than hit.
Jim
there is 3 walmart around me and none has reload stuff in pa
There is a powder and primer shortage. We have two wars going on and people are hoarding. I could understand cash flow issues hurting a few gun shops but reloading supplies are in short supply at even the biggest named suppliers like Powder Valley and Pats Reloading.
quote:Theory: The hoarding, bubbling, mania, and hyperbole began to pick up when some of the sporting goods retailers were behind on their bills and were not getting ample shipments of goods. They attempted to cover themselves by cock and bull stories about hoarding, future taxes, ammo taxes, blah, blah, blah.
This "behind on the bills" theory simply doesn't jibe with the facts as I know them.
Demand for ammo right now is exceptionally high, as anyone in the business of stocking or selling it will tell you (that is, if you can get them on the phone!).
Every online retailer of ammo had their phone lines jammed for days after the election. This wasn't some figment of the imagination, it was real.
One dealer told me candidly that he sold in two days the amount of ammo he usually sells in a month, and virtually his entire inventory was depleted in a week. At last one company (Widener's) uses a database to list its actual inventory online, and if you were watching, you'd have seen it depleting quickly in real time.
Further, I've heard the same sorts of things from multiple dealers; namely that demand for ammo after the election was unprecedented, and they simply couldn't keep up. Some sold out quickly. . .some jacked up prices.
Given that the first rule of retailing is to put things on your shelves that the customers actually want to buy, the LAST thing any retailer is going to do is skimp on purchasing ammo or components that have been been flying off shelves! If they had limited cash, that would be one of the FIRST places they would try to put new money.
Quite a few of the Walmarts here carry ammo and components, although they do not carry a broad range of selection in bullets or powders.
With regard to the bubbling, hyping, mania, etc: Only time will tell if this is a bubble or something else. However, bubbles, at varying stages in their lives, must by necessity be supported by anecdotes, hyperbole, mania, madness, ignorance, or whatever you may wish to call it. For example, the real estate flippers justified paying an ever higher price because prices just went up some more.....until they did not go up any more......then they crashed.
Unless the short term demand increase that you speak of, and that does seem to exist, is underpinned by people actually loading and shooting more, this bubble will end sooner rather than later. If the bubble is primarily supported by hoarders rationalizing that NOBANANAS will tax the hell out of anything that looks like a black rifle, an AR, an AK, a Glock, or ammo, or components, and such does not come to pass, the bubble will burst. Who knows? Only time will tell.
In the meantime, if many commodity prices have fallen 60 to 80 percent since peaking last summer, then I may suggest that the hyping may be initiated by someone, perhaps a distributor or manufacturer or retailer, that was caught paying peak prices for inputs or product, and now, will get killed if prices fall. Copper, petro, and lead have all crashed, and may go lower.
Ignore economics at your peril.
Beantownshootah:
Quite a few of the Walmarts here carry ammo and components, although they do not carry a broad range of selection in bullets or powders.
I believe it.
quote:
Unless the short term demand increase that you speak of, and that does seem to exist, is underpinned by people actually loading and shooting more, this bubble will end sooner rather than later. If the bubble is primarily supported by hoarders rationalizing that NOBANANAS will tax the hell out of anything that looks like a black rifle, an AR, an AK, a Glock, or ammo, or components, and such does not come to pass, the bubble will burst. Who knows? Only time will tell.
In the meantime, if many commodity prices have fallen 60 to 80 percent since peaking last summer, then I may suggest that the hyping may be initiated by someone, perhaps a distributor or manufacturer or retailer, that was caught paying peak prices for inputs or product, and now, will get killed if prices fall. Copper, petro, and lead have all crashed, and may go lower.
Ignore economics at your peril.
With due respect, "economics" state that the price of ANYTHING is set by supply and demand. And if you want to throw around economics terms or concepts, lets use them correctly.
By definition a "bubble" refers to trade in high volumes at prices considerably at variance with intrinsic values.
If demand increases while supply remains the same and therefore prices increase, that's *NOT* a "bubble" or a "mania". That's perfectly normal, and its what happens with ANY good or product. Increased demand increases value.
Ultimately, your question comes down to this: If commodities are so much cheaper now than three years ago, why hasn't the price of ammo fallen to match?
There are multiple reasons for this, none of which need invoke "mania". Obviously, increased short-term demand is a factor. If, as you suggest, demand decreases, then prices should decrease proportionately to the extent that they increased because of demand *so long as supply remains constant*. That last bit is actually NOT a given since ammo is produced in runs which take some time to gear up, and are based on demand and costs at THAT time, but I'm not going to get into this.
Another less obvious, but equally important reason for no price drop is that the ammo sitting on the store shelves TODAY wasn't manufactured last week, but likely months before. First it goes from manufacture through QC, then packaging in lots, then to distributors, to retail, etc. The ammo manufactured months ago was loaded from components (eg primers, bullet, powder and brass) that may have been manufactured months (or even longer) before that. The point is it takes at least several months before lower commodities costs even *could* get reflected in ammo prices. The cheaper copper from this month probably won't get into brass cases on the Walmart shelves for at least several more months.
FWIW, despite everything above, supposedly Walmart recently lowered its price on 9mm luger ammo, for the first time in several years.
Remember also that ammo cost is NOT merely a reflection of commodities costs. For example, just because the price of copper (for example) has fallen by 50% that does NOT mean that the cost of manufacturing brass cases has fallen by 50%. The cost of the actual metal is important, but its only one of many factors in ammo costs.
Labor costs have NOT fallen, and zinc costs may not have fallen by as much as copper. Just because oil is 50% cheaper today than five months ago doesn't mean that transportation is 50% cheaper. . .it isn't. Taxes haven't gone down. Importation fees haven't gone down. Packaging costs probably HAVE gone down, but not nearly so much as the commodities, etc.
When we are talking about surplus-type ammo, remember, that ammo could literally have been made 10, 20, 50 years ago. (EG I just bought some Turkish Mauser ammo made in the early 1950s!). Today's commodities prices are barely a factor at all in the cost of THAT ammo. (Mostly only to the extent that surplus ammo "competes" with modern production ammo). Again, its supply and demand.
For example, no large military is using Mauser rifles anymore. So large scale military production of 8mm Mauser ammo came to a halt years ago. The supplies of surplus type 8mm are fixed and ever-dwindling, leading to higher and higher prices, irrespective of the prices of commodities. You can halve the price of copper AND lead. . .that doesn't make 8mm Mauser ammo any more available! Lower transportation costs WILL get it to you a bit cheaper, but that's only a relatively small piece of the pie in already-manufactured ammo. Conversely 8mm ammo would get cheaper if ALL ammo gets cheaper, as competition from other calibers will draw off demand from 8mm.
As another example, part of the reason why 7.62x54R ammo has more than doubled in price over the last three years is because of the growing popularity of the dirt-cheap surplus Mosin-nagant rifles. More demand for the surplus Russian .30 ammo, WITHOUT increased supply (remember supply is essentially fixed, and potentially even decreasing) means higher prices. This isn't a "bubble". . .its the reflection of "honest" supply and demand.