Primer prices

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kalielkslayer

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Is $75 a 1,000 the new normal, $140 for BR primers?

I’m in pretty good shape, but after the last 2 years, I never want to be caught short again.

So I’ve had primers in my cart several times recently but with either 1,000 or 2,000 limit, and paying HazMat I just couldn’t pull the trigger.

I know I’m sweating a small fee but paying HazMat on 5,000, or 10,000 makes more sense.

I’ve left my cart with powder in it because I only had 4-6 lbs in it with a 2 lb limit on each type and couldn’t find any other in stock powders I wanted.
 
The last couple of times recently that I’ve seen SPP for sale online, the price was around $95 per K, not including shipping and hazmat.
 
For now, yes. As long as people keep buying them all up at that price, yes. In time, I do expect to see them come back down some, though getting all the way down to the $25/1000 I used to be able to buy fiocchi for is probably gone for good. I think once the market settles, we will probably be seeing around $40/1000 or so. Now, how long it takes to get there, that is anybody's guess.

The thing to remember is that reloaders are an afterthought. That may hurt some peoples' feelings, but it is the truth. Right now, nearly all of the peers are going to factory loaded ammo. When supply finally outstrips demand on that, they will be able to divert more to reloading components. That is when the price will finally stabilize.
 
jebova2301 said:
For now, yes. As long as people keep buying them all up at that price, yes. In time, I do expect to see them come back down some, though getting all the way down to the $25/1000 I used to be able to buy fiocchi for is probably gone for good. I think once the market settles, we will probably be seeing around $40/1000 or so. Now, how long it takes to get there, that is anybody's guess.

The thing to remember is that reloaders are an afterthought. That may hurt some peoples' feelings, but it is the truth. Right now, nearly all of the peers are going to factory loaded ammo. When supply finally outstrips demand on that, they will be able to divert more to reloading components. That is when the price will finally stabilize.
Click to expand...


I agree with that assessment.

Yet I have powder I overpaid for during my first “reloading component” shortage, Clinton in like 1994.

A couple bottles of RL22 with $19.99 tags on them.

Cans of IMR 4350 and 4381.

I’ve dumped some that were opened but not used for a while. But the sealed ones I’m still holding onto.
 
In 2020 I bought, in store, 14,000 primers.

From $34 a 1,000 to $53 a 1,000. The $53 was CCI #41s.

They seem to be pretty proud of those.
 
Around here (before it got crazy) powder was $19-$28 a pound. Primers were $30-40 depending on which shop. I got a feeling powder around here will be $25-35 a pound and primers settling at $40-50 when it gets back to normal.

I expect ammunition prices to be higher as well. The days of $7.99 for 50 rounds of blasting 9mm are probably gone.

I'll pay the higher prices as reloading is one of my two hobbies. The other is shooting lol.
 
jebova2301 said:
For now, yes. As long as people keep buying them all up at that price, yes. In time, I do expect to see them come back down some, though getting all the way down to the $25/1000 I used to be able to buy fiocchi for is probably gone for good. I think once the market settles, we will probably be seeing around $40/1000 or so. Now, how long it takes to get there, that is anybody's guess.

The thing to remember is that reloaders are an afterthought. That may hurt some peoples' feelings, but it is the truth. Right now, nearly all of the peers are going to factory loaded ammo. When supply finally outstrips demand on that, they will be able to divert more to reloading components. That is when the price will finally stabilize.
Click to expand...
Around here they were pretty darn close to $40\1000 before Covid. Area shops typically charged $35.99-$37/.99, depending if large, small, magnum, etc. We also have a 6% sales tax. Some shops would have a nice $29.99-31.99 per thousand sale price for 2 weekends per year. I figure they'll settle at $50-55 with maybe an occasional $45\1000 sale price
 
I can’t justify paying hazmat on 1k primers, It would better If I could add a few pounds of powder but it seems when shops have primers in stock they don’t have powder and vis versa.
I probably won’t need LRP for several years but I’ll probably have to buy some SRP and especially SPP next year. I hope you guys are right and prices stabilize around $40-45/k by then along with reasonable limits; 5 or 10k
 
Curious if some of you guys know the average cost per unit of the stock you have on hand. Then, how many units do you have to buy at todays prices to significantly affect that average cost.
Also curious if some of you have a minimum inventory level for primers. IOW you never let your inventory get below a certain level regardless of cost.
 
The powders I’m seeing in stores around here are $39 and up. Primers are $99-$109 a brick
Did see some SPP and SRP the other day for $7.99 a sleeve. Limit one sleeve
 
Local Bass Pro has been at $79.99 per K of CCI or Fed SPP/SRP for about 3 months now. Jumped from $65 per K to $80 overnight. That's when I stopped buying. I'm well stocked now, and was before the shortages hit, so will wait for prices to come back down. But $75 per K is probably a decent price right now. Adding hazmat, taxes and shipping would put that over the top for me, though. Depends on how bad you need them.
 
LGS just recently got a shipment of Winchesters. 75 bucks a brick no limit. Tough pill to swallow if one has to pay hazmat and shipping on one brick which some online dealers have.

We Get it...
 
jebova2301 said:
As long as people keep buying them all up at that price, yes.
Click to expand...
There are two blatantly erroneous assumptions here: 1) no new handloaders will enter the market; and 2) every current handloader has stopped using their on-hand inventory; IOW, no one is handloading or, the only people who are handloading have an infinite supply and will never need to restock.
Please stop repeating the false assumption that prices are elevated strictly because people are buying product. It's wrong and just plain silly. It bespeaks an ignorance of markets, production and basic economics. When the demand for primers decreases, the manufacturers will return to a more reasonable and easily attained production level which allows them to give their employees some time off and perform basic, scheduled equipment maintenance instead of running 24/7 using every available resource as they are now. Prices are stable, in case no one's noticed. They are stable at a rate commensurate with the current economic realities - booming inflation, short supplies of highly skilled labor, shortages and import bans on certain metals and chemicals necessary to primer production, higher energy costs which are continuing to escalate, and a collapsing supply chain - and the available market demand - which is growing at previously unpredicted rates, placing pressure on prices and supply.

Prices will come down when the economic realities improve, supplies return, manufacturing costs fall, and highly skilled labor is more nearly available at affordable prices for the manufacturers. When will that happen? Unknown. But how many bricks of primers I buy between now and then effects the price of primers in general not at all. Zip, nada, nichts.
 
The “new normal” is whatever they can get you to pay. If your looking for high prices they are pretty easy to find, that is for sure.

Went into an Academy a couple weeks ago and they had CCI primers for $5/100 and .22lr for $2.99/50.

I did get 200 rounds of the .22 for testing.

However, Academy selling them for $5 tells me that they didn’t pay $7.5/100 for them. So those selling at $7.50/100 and up, are simply making more profit.

Kind of funny how bad people used to trash ‘cheaper than dirt’, for always jacking up the prices during panics. To the point they would not buy from them once everything settled down and they had to lower their prices again to keep stuff moving into and out of the store. It caused them to shut down their closest walk in store to me. I figured it was their fault for trying to screw their customers, I wouldn’t be loyal to someone trying to take advantage of me either.

Looks like the real news in “new normal” is for people to take it up the tail pipe as much as possible and come back for more when they get it back in stock….

I have seen a lot more sales from manufacturers, wanting in on the prices people are willing to pay though. They historically haven’t wanted to deal with the “little fish” but they notice when things are flying off the shelf at prices over MSRP and that’s already above dealer pricing and the profit they get for the distribution service they provide.
 
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Was a drag yesterday going thru my primer cabinet and pulling out a brick with the $19.99 price tag still attached.
Glad I did the old buy it anyway when things came back after the Sandy Hook crap........it'll be a while before I even come close to running out
 
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Before this thread is shutdown I want to say my piece. Last year, I sold a ten year old junker Toyota mini-van to carmax for $11400. Two years ago it would’ve gone for half that. I’m about to sell a 2009 caddy for $6000 (edit: 5900)

That’s certainly a great pic of our current multi-cause inflation. Last May I bought a new vehicle to replace the Toyota. It was possibly the last of its type available due to chip shortage.

Im replacing the caddy with primers.
 
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Yea that's what you want to call it "new normal" I call it screwing the next guy.
I have enough to get by & I'm not buying at those prices unless I absolutely have to.
 
GeoDudeFlorida said:
There are two blatantly erroneous assumptions here: 1) no new handloaders will enter the market; and 2) every current handloader has stopped using their on-hand inventory; IOW, no one is handloading or, the only people who are handloading have an infinite supply and will never need to restock.
Please stop repeating the false assumption that prices are elevated strictly because people are buying product. It's wrong and just plain silly. It bespeaks an ignorance of markets, production and basic economics. When the demand for primers decreases, the manufacturers will return to a more reasonable and easily attained production level which allows them to give their employees some time off and perform basic, scheduled equipment maintenance instead of running 24/7 using every available resource as they are now. Prices are stable, in case no one's noticed. They are stable at a rate commensurate with the current economic realities - booming inflation, short supplies of highly skilled labor, shortages and import bans on certain metals and chemicals necessary to primer production, higher energy costs which are continuing to escalate, and a collapsing supply chain - and the available market demand - which is growing at previously unpredicted rates, placing pressure on prices and supply.

Prices will come down when the economic realities improve, supplies return, manufacturing costs fall, and highly skilled labor is more nearly available at affordable prices for the manufacturers. When will that happen? Unknown. But how many bricks of primers I buy between now and then effects the price of primers in general not at all. Zip, nada, nichts.
Click to expand...

Warning for the sensitive among us <tongue in cheek humor follows> : LOL, If suddenly everybody decided NOT to pay the higher prices..........Vista, who drives the ammo/primer market now.......would breathe a sigh of relief, cut production back, fire half their new hires.........and primers would stay at exactly the same price, only more of it would be profit and the supply would drop in half. The demand drives production.....high demand = high production, investment in new workers, investment in machinery, etc. Economics 101 for those that keep on putting forward the myth that "people paying the high prices are the problem". I think most of the people who decry the free market are closet socialists. Maybe they can all get together and write AOC, Bernie, and "Brandon" a strongly worded letter begging for primer price caps! Hahahaha.
 
packetloss said:
My guess is the best price we will see after things settle down is about $50 per 1000. There is some supply chain inflation, but there is also some permanent inflation so I don't think we will ever see $25-$30 again.
Click to expand...

I "liked" your post because I believe your $50/1000 statement to be true, not because I like the $50 payment.....:cool:
 
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