Scene from a gun/pawn shop I was perusing today.
This, more than Wuhan Flu, bothers me.
Notes From The Bunker
Scene from a gun/pawn shop I was perusing today.
This, more than Wuhan Flu, bothers me.
People were paying $125 and up at the gun show Friday. Nothing left at the end of the day.
That’s obscene.
Just play the music of Bachman Turner Overdrive, “you ain’t seen nothing yet”. This inflation, price gouging, supply/demand will certainly carry over to every other commodity or items. Look at old timey photos of merchant’s prices for common goods for even more sticker shock examples. Indicative examples of economy and systems collapsing. It was all fun while it lasted anyway.
Commander:
How much of it (in YOUR opinion) is supply/demand, how much is Government interference and how much is profiteering?
I suspect it is some of each…
Im not sure how to define government interference. It isnt like .gov went out and ordered primer makers to raise prices. However, .gov does bear some responsibility for creating a panicky environment. As for profiteering, I don’t really have any problem with that…. no one forces the consumer to purchase the items at that rpice – the consumer can always say no and the product goes unsold. As for supply/demand..I’d say thats 99% of it.
I am very sure that there would be foreign, reputable firms willing to step up with supplies if let – But easing shortages is the opposite of what the government wants!
Time will tell…
I contend that the Bloomberg & Soros teams are funding large scale purchases that produce several results in there favor – arm the BLM / Antifa crews and restrict the locals. The big dealer around here said that when this whole shortage started, there were groups of people showing up buying $10,000 worth of ammo at a time and paying cash. This was happening several times a week, and often timed to their incoming deliveries. They were buying by the case after case and cleaning them out. There was nothing technically illegal about it, but the store manager started to follow them out to their trucks and looking at license plates. It was never the same people or vehicles, but they were all from out of state. Looking back, the store owner said that the locals didn’t have a chance.The store had about 80 feet of six foot high shelves filled with everything from .50 BMG to the scarce exotics. Now there might be a box of .357 Sig or 10mm but that’s it. The shelves have been absolutely empty since last spring.
Does not appear the store was really to concerned about the locals not getting any ammo!!! If true, the store owner could have placed limits on purchases, but sound like he liked the cash!! His right to do so, but he does not need to be make excuses!!!
CZ, in a truly free market, it’s fair to say that no one forces the consumer to purchase at a given price. But we haven’t had a truly free market in more than a century. Between monopolies, corporate collusion, government regulation, conflicting legal regimes, etc. the consumer is often forced to purchase in order to survive.
Those of us around here, who know how to look ahead and prepare for inevitable hard times, are a huge step ahead of the masses, but how many of our choices are almost as badly constrained by unfree markets? How many manufacturers would gladly sell currently verboten items to us if not for existing regulatory regimes?
There’s no problem with profit, but there is a difference between profiting and profiteering, and the difference is the same as the difference between free markets and unfree markets, or the difference between capitalism and crony corporatism. Merely going Galt today is nearly enough to have unfriendlies banging on your door…
local pawn/silver shop dealing in ammo now. will pay big bucks in sliver for any sort of bullets. during the depression my grandfather had to purchase 22lr by the round, one or two at a time. its all they could afford, and had to work long hard hours to get it. when he was ten or twelve y/o his father handed him 2 rounds and the family single shot rifle and told him “bring back supper, or don’t come back.” can you imagine? yeah, he became a crack shot REAL fast.
Where was this?? I’d gladly trade some of my excess ammo for silver at a favorable rate of exchange.
WOW!
Was anyone buying them?
Typical price. Gun store has no .22, lr, short, or long. in FACT NO AMMO, shotgun , or otherwise, 5 handguns, 0 inventory
It’s nothing more than the retail sector supply and demand principle at work, which I generally feel is the best way to price things – I’m not a fan of subsidies or targeted discounts – and the pawn shop is just trying to get what they can – I can understand and accept that – it’s a “cost of doing business” as my friend, Terry, used to say. What I’d be curious to know is how manufacturer prices have changed since the ammo shortage. They all say that they’re running full out, but how have the manufacturers changed their prices? Academy seems to have at least some ammo for sale regularly, and their prices have increased, but not to the insane levels we’re seeing in some situations – so that tells me that manufacturers haven’t increased prices to insane levels. The guys on the gun boards with nothing else to do but stand in an ammo line and then resell the ammo for 3X what they paid are doing what those people always do in situations like this – but where is all the other ammo going?
there was a notice from Winchester informing a 25% increase in the cost of primers.
https://www.internationalsportsman.com/winchester-announces-2021-price-increases-on-ammunition-and-reloading-supplies/
As far as Pawn Shops buying ammo from the public and reselling, that must come with a huge liability concern. What if the ammo has been compromised by some anti-gun zealot? I remember reading the CIA used to find N. Vietnamese ammo caches, take them back the base, fill some of the cartridges with C4 then return them to the location. They were masters at resealing the packaging so one couldn’t tell it had been messed with.
When fired from an SKS it would blow the bolt back through the skull of the person firing the rifle. The entire ammo cache would then be abandoned.
That is actually a good deal!! $250 seems to be around the going rate for 1K of primers on the internet auction sites
Look at the picture more carefully it’s a box of 250
250 is the model number. The 1000 at the bottom left of the box (top right in the picture) is number of primers in the box.
I don’t know who is taking a bigger bite , the manufacturers or the distributors.
I saw one of those 800 rd Federal “range packs” of .22lr for $375 yesterday.
I have a choice of whom and where to place the blame for rising obscene pricing of practically everything. But Guns, ammo, and ALL reloading supplies our wonderful overlords have the most to do with the shortages of all things. How you ask, by the simple regulatory nature of the commie controlling mentality. By their incessant desire to control everything everyone does, thinks, says, how they act, they have regulated the average person to death. Name one simple aspect of your life that isn’t somehow regulated by gummint beaurocraps… with the exception (at least for now) of the direction you wipe your ass….
As you have noticed, food prices are now on the rise weekly, and I expect the availability of certain items will become scarce within a year or so.
I’m seeing $225 for small pistol primers at gun sshows. Fortunately I’ve got about 16k in primers at the moment so I should be ok.
As much as I bemoan the high prices, no one who comes here, or Aesop’s site, or dozens of other places on the web can complain that they weren’t warned, and advised to stock up long ago. Unless you’ve been the victim of some misfortune, you should be stocked up already.
I know, the desire for MORE increases with every observation that there is less out there. And the answer to “how much is enough” is always “more”… but.. no one should be actually hurting that has been paying attention over the last 10 years.
If you are short, sign up for emails from grabagun and psa and some of the others, and jump when they say they’ve got some in stock. Suck it up and pay the price too, because the alternative – government price regulation – is a horror that NO ONE should even think they want, lest it come about.
Pay the price, because it isn’t getting cheaper until this thing (whatever it ends up being) is over. Last March, I cringed buying 762×39 at one third the current price. Same for 9mm and 556. I’m glad I sucked it up and took the deal.
Think hard about your actual use scenario too. Outside of range time and training, what do you envision that you need all that ammo? Who exactly are you having running gun battles with that last more than a mag or two? If you’re an urban partisan, surely you can resupply from your targeted group? How many rounds does it take, per partisan, to ambush a judge? mayor? etc? If they’re at your house, you’ve already lost. You get a couple mags before they Ruby Ridge your ass. Outside of a true zombie hoard, that doesn’t shoot back or understand the usefulness of fire, what threat outlives a couple of mags?
n
The defensive rifle course I took a few years back was given by two ex-military guys who had been in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their take was if you have to change magazines you are in deep shit. They didn’t recall having to change mags once in an active war zone.
concur on all points. without air, arty, medivac, and a battalion qrf exactly how long will they last in a firefight.
The real long term threat here is the loss of all the gun stores. If you don’t have stock, you can’t sell anything, and then you go broke.
What kind of barriers can YOU think of to restarting a gun store in, say, 5 years…?
My local is down to doing transfers and selling off their personal guns to keep the lights on. It isn’t pretty.
n
Ryan- Total gouging. At a fairly large regional retailer in SE WI this week that same range pack was 49.99, which I thought was outrageous. But it’s a lot better than 375.00.
I also bought 2-100 packs of magnum small rifle primers at Fleet Farm in SE WI for 4.79/100. You could only buy 2 packs at a time. The next day I went back there and the only thing they had left was large rifle primers, CCI, so bought 2/100 at 4.79 each. So prices have gone up from pre panic when you could buy 1000 box for 32-34.00. So yes manufacturers have raised prices but not to the gouge level of gun shows or online sellers. Ethical retailers like this Fleet Farm have simply kept their margin as before I believe. This whole thing sucks so glad I had a lot of primers from before as is my prepper mentality.
Because there are still people out there who don’t seem to believe it, here is a link to a guns and ammo auction that is still ongoing. Look at the pricing. This is what people are WILLING TO PAY because either there isn’t any product in their local channels, or they think it’s WORTH IT.
https://www.proxibid.com/Webster-s-Auction-Palace/150-LOTS-FIREARMS-AMMUNITION-SCOPES-MORE/event-catalog/196014
Keep in mind too, that there are taxes and an 18% buyer’s premium on top of the hammer sale price. I usually just add 25% in my head to be close to the final price.
n
(and just because there are some retailers in the boonies with product on the shelves at the old price doesn’t mean that everyone else is wrong when they describe what they’re seeing.)
“So yes manufacturers have raised prices but not to the gouge level of gun shows or online sellers. Ethical retailers like this Fleet Farm have simply kept their margin as before I believe. ”
–I’d wait to see what the price is when they restock, if they can, before patting them on the back for being good guys. It’s much more likely that this was old stock.
n
Nick- Not patting them on the back per se. and this is not old stock. It’s what they are getting in in drinks and drabs and trying to ration out to the widest base of their customers they can by limiting amounts.
And I am in no way doubting the gist of what you are saying, only commenting that different regions and retailers/dealers have different selling philosophies. Again I was not fought short in this whole fiasco as for the past 10 years have been stoking up when the essentials were on sale and making sure I had enough for a time such as we are seeing now. That’s being a common sense prepper ( or Survivalist if you prefer ).
Thanks for the clarification, I wasn’t directing it specifically at you, but I see why it read that way. I’ve been reading lots of comments in various places since wuflu kicked off, that boil down to the commenter claiming that anything they hadn’t personally experienced wasn’t actually happening. Since elephants exist whether a person has seen one or not, I have been increasingly frustrated and sensitive to that argument. Sorry for that.
There have also been reports of people going to out of the way stores and finding toilet paper, or ammo, or anything else that was in short supply this last year, and buying it up at the old prices, which can leave the locals with nothing (TP and sanitizer were particularly vulnerable to this) and leaving the store owner with less money because that was the last of the items he’s going to get for a while.
In your case, great score! I’m really surprised it was current stock. My gun store buddy, a stocking dealer, can’t get guns from his suppliers or ammo. They’re telling him not to expect anything for a while either. He gets dribs and drabs, people are bringing in consignments, and he does transfers, but he’s hurting.
The auctions I see, like the one I linked up thread, often have single boxes of ammo. It looks like people are cleaning out their drawers, or grandpa’s drawers. There are even baggies of loose rounds or just brass, and it’s selling – really well.
People are clearly needing ammo they can’t find elsewhere.
I don’t think prices are coming down anytime soon, so anyone out there that’s looking, if you find some, suck it up and buy…
n
Wow, and I thought $79.99 CAD ($62.44 USD) was outrageous.
I think this is a combination of panic buying leading to shortages and manufacturers taking advantage.
Z, Apparently I scored yesterday at the small Butte gun show and picked up 400 CCI small pistol primers for $55.00. I noticed a lot of used reloading kits, presses, dies & equipment was available. Mostly seemed from elderly folks not using or wanting them anymore.
Prices there overall for firearms were semi-reasonable considering the current market to….well, insane.
Was nice to see human faces again for the most part too. Maybe one out of ten wearing face diapers.
At those prices, I could make a nice fortune.
Only if I was willing to sell.
That’s cheap compared to what I paid on an auction site.
wow interesting