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New Ammo vs Original Surplus
Weimar
Member Posts: 16 ✭✭
I'm looking forward to upgrading my home security with a PPs-43 any day now and am pleased to find cartridges by Wolf or Sellier & Bellot for the 7.62 Tok at reasonable prices. Seriously, 85 grain HP leaving the barrel at 1600 fps ought to stop even the most aggressive zombies if I can keep the discharge from setting off the smoke alarm! So, with a 35 rd clip, I don't need to spend a hundred bucks on ammo.
But I keep seeing these surplus rounds from the freaking 1950s for sale at less than a dime a pop and, of course, I get to thinking... at $200 for 1200 FMJs, I can spend some TIME at the range, hopefully getting good on this new rod.
How reliable is this 50+ year old ammo that would enable me to spend hours at the range (not sure where to find the time) vs new ammo that would fire (assumedly) each and every time I needed to "persuade" an unwanted guest?
But I keep seeing these surplus rounds from the freaking 1950s for sale at less than a dime a pop and, of course, I get to thinking... at $200 for 1200 FMJs, I can spend some TIME at the range, hopefully getting good on this new rod.
How reliable is this 50+ year old ammo that would enable me to spend hours at the range (not sure where to find the time) vs new ammo that would fire (assumedly) each and every time I needed to "persuade" an unwanted guest?
Comments
I'm looking forward to upgrading my home security with a PPs-43
Epic fail! Get a shotgun. I've run across these so called PPS-43 "pistols", with the stock welded permanently closed for awhile now. It has a U.S. built receiver that has had the open bolt firing system deleted. It must weigh a good 7 pounds and has the ergonomics of a anchor. Your just wasting your time and money by getting one of these useless POS's. My 2?.
The 7.62x25 is a wicked little round, and I love the fact that you can fry a steak with the fireball it puts out in my cz-52. Very cool at night!
Hope that helps
But if you're going to spend the $400+ necessary to buy one of these, I agree that there are MUCH better choices out there for a defensive arm.
quote:But I keep seeing these surplus rounds from the freaking 1950s for sale at less than a dime a pop and, of course, I get to thinking... at $200 for 1200 FMJs, I can spend some TIME at the range, hopefully getting good on this new rod.
Correct me if I'm wrong but $200/1200 fmjs is 16-2/3 cents per round. Can you still really find these for under $.10 each?
Just as a basis for comparison, ball steel case 9mm luger can be had for as little as $9 a box (and you don't even have to buy in bulk). EG:
http://www.natchezss.com/product.cfm?contentID=productDetail&prodID=DZ919FMJ
At 18 cents a round, the 9mm is price-competitive with 16.66 cent a round 7.62x25, but the steel case ammo will be non-corrosive (a big advantage, IMO), and can function in a wide variety of other guns.
Potential overpenetration with the 7.62x25 rounds might make them less than ideal for use for home-defense (depending on where your home is and how its set up).
The $400 you spend on the PP43 could be spent just as well on a Glock, Beretta, or other highly reliable, more conventional handgun, and if you want cheap practice, you can get a .22 conversion unit for the handgun.
And for you penny watchers, I was ball parking a little bit. The actuals that I've seen the "imports" list the Polish FMJs is $175 for 1260 rds (didn't check if that includes shipping costs) which works out to about 14 cents a round.
What I was asking, and got answered along the way, was should I trust the round to spark up each and every time.
Personally unless I was gonna try to shoot someone through my own door, (can't imagine why I would do that) I would still prefer my Ortgies 7.65 that I can tuck in a back pocket and won't miss or jam at close and personal range. In theory, I'd rather shoot the PPs with Wolf HP, which is just under 1600 f/s and right at 40 cents a round.
Gonna have to look into the CZ52... still not seeing the zombies in the yard yet! Thank god!
Howeveer, if it is purely the nastalgic part of it, then I can see your point, but for nastalgic, has not the 45 ACP been around a bit longer than the 7.62x25?
Best
Seriously, if you think the 7.62x25 is such a hot round, why is it it is not more wide spread, and in more use than other's? I am thinking the zombies are going to have a BBQ if they show up on your door step. But I guess the 7.62x25 is better than taking a knife to a gunfight. At least you could excape pain quickly.
Howeveer, if it is purely the nastalgic part of it, then I can see your point, but for nastalgic, has not the 45 ACP been around a bit longer than the 7.62x25?
9mm luger was introduced in 1902 as was .38 special. 7.62x25 Tokarev round wasn't introduced until the early 1930s.
So both .38 spl and 9mm luger are both older. . .if not quite as exotic in the USA. IMO "nostalgia" might be a good reason for recreational shooting, but its probably not a good consideration for picking a defensive arm.
Just to be Devil's advocate, whether or not a particular round is in wide military or police use right now, doesn't necessarily bear on whether the round itself is good or not. 7.62x25 was in wide use by both police and military in Asia and Eastern Europe for many years, and its still in use in both, though not nearly as much as in years past.
.45ACP isn't all that widely used by militaries either right now. . .wouldn't say that one is "no good". 9x23 Winchester and 10mm auto are both great rounds ballistically, but I don't think there are any agencies on the planet issuing either one for service use. Etc.
On ballistics, there is a quite a bit of debate about which handgun round is "best", and nobody really has THE definitive answer, because the question is pretty open-ended.
I think the question is better phrased which round is "best for ME".
You have take into account terminal ballistics, recoil, noise, flash, cost of round, availability of the round, type of loads available, characteristics of the platform, capacity, etc.
7.62x25 may not be the "best" round for home defense, but I think its also not the "worst", and I wouldn't entirely dismiss it. In terms of pure terminal ballistics, its better than any .22LR, .22 magnum from a pistol, .25ACP, .380ACP, and all of the .32 handgun rounds (except maybe .327 magnum). Its arguably better than an ordinary .38, and that was THE standard police and home defense round for probably 50 years in the USA. So its probably "good enough".
That said, from an ordinary pistol 7.62x25 is NOT as good as 9mm luger +P, since you can only expect maybe 1400fps with the 85 grain bullets (compared to say 1250 fps for 9mm luger with significantly wider and heavier 124 grain bullets).
The big flash you see from this round out of pistols is from the powder wasted that would get burned in a longer submachine gun barrel. As another comparison, Corbon 9mm+P will give you 1500 fps with 90 grain bullets from an ordinary pistol, which is comparable to the ballistics of the 7.62x25 from a carbine, though again with a wider (and likely better quality hollowpoint) bullet.
These things probably explain why 7.62x25 has largely fallen out of favor compared to 9mm luger.
So this raises the question, what is this thing really going to do for you that 9mm luger won't? Yes, ammo is still a little cheaper than 9mm luger TODAY, but who knows what the availability of cheap surplus ammo in this caliber will be like in 4-5 years? There are enough guns out there that I don't think commercial production will stop altogether anytime soon, but I think it is certainly plausible that the cheap surplus could dry up and eliminate any price advantage over 9mm luger.
Another thing to consider is the TYPE of surplus you're talking about. I can't speak to which lots are good and not good, but I've heard about tins of surplus where lots of the rounds have split necks, and other tins with hard primers where misfires were common with pistols. A sub-gun will probably set off hard-primer ammo, though its not going to fix split-neck ammo, should you encounter any.
Thanks Beansie, for the rundown on the merits of various types.
Just got back from the indoor range... so you can imagine I was firing at only thirty yards. I say "ONLY" knowing that I probably won't need to use PPs-43 until the "zombies" are inside the fence anyway.
For being such basic construction, it's an anchor. But it's balanced well enough that I could keep the first magazine (27/30) inside the twelve inch diameter, even with those retro "good luck" iron sights that probably need adjusting. And that fraction (27/30) was deeply annoying because the missing (3/30)rounds failed to discharge.
I found nothing throwing me "off" like squeezing the trigger and all I get is "click". The batch was that Polish "paper box" stuff that comes in increments of 70... some say 53, some says 1968 on the rim. If this stuff is still accurate, hopefully some S&B FMJ will be just as accurate without the ten percent failure.
BTW... once the smoke cleared, the next magazine had the same (27/30) rate, with a harder time staying in the lines of course.
Thank the Poles that the PPs is such a simple design, because the clean up for 90 rounds of the 7.62 x 25mm was a dirty little...