Primer Availability & Prices

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Will Munny

Will Munny

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I just got back from the big box retailer after looking for some primers. What I am seeing
  • CCI Large Pistol Magnum-$8.99, limit of 5
  • CCI Small Rifle-$13.99, limit of 5
  • CCI Small Rifle Magnum-$8.99, limit of 5
  • Black & White Box "5.56" Primers-$10.99, limit of 5
These have stayed in stock for 2 days solid at this point, so I doubt much is moving. Particularly noteworthy is the elevated price on small rifle primers, that is keeping them on the shelves finally.
Large rifle primers of any variety remain very difficult to find. I've only seen them once this year, and they were sold out within a day at the elevated price of $9.99.
 
Will Munny said:
What type? Large Pistol seem to sit on the shelf even at $8.99, but at $9.99 Large Rifle will clear out at that price.
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Several, including at least one box of small rifle. I was more than a little surprised to see it. Most were magnum varieties but there were some standards mixed in. I didn’t check to see if every variety was there after I saw the price tag on the first box.
 
I'm with CoalCracker. I'm not buying... not paying the prices people want online for primers and other components. I was saying this when the pandemic was digging in and the opportunists started coming out of the woodwork on Gunbroker and elsewhere. I saw that coming. The last box of 1,000 Winchester large rifle primers I bought cost me $57.00 in October 2020 on Gunbroker. After that I was done with those people.

The primer shortage was largely contrived by people who were buying up and hording product. Those pirates have always had primers... and they'll sell them to you for as much as you'll pay.

I can wait. I'm not so pessimistic about the future. I'm just old enough to have lived through enough crisis to know that things resolve. Prices come down. We get back closer to what was normal eventually.
 
I recently paid $128/1,000 for CCI 200s, and $138/1,000 for CCI 250s. Plus Hazmat and shipping.

I was glad I got em!

I really only wanted the 250s but since I was already paying HazMat and shipping why not throw in the 200s and 1,000 Cheddite 209s I had used up the previous 3 weeks.

SPP and SRP I’ve broken my muscle memory and I don’t buy them just because they are available anymore.

During the height of this most recent scare I paid between $36/1,000 to $99/1,000 for SPPs and was glad each time.

But enough is enough!
 
CoalCrackerAl said:
I refuse to pay more than 50.00 a 1000.
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You will be shooting air guns when you run out. Inflation alone will drive prices higher than that, and material shortages will be added pressure.

Beck said:
The last box of 1,000 Winchester large rifle primers I bought cost me $57.00 in October 2020 on Gunbroker. After that I was done with those people.
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Chances are good that the seller was more sorry selling at that price than you were buying. Within 6 months those same primers were going at 4x the price. And selling.
 
They seem to be coming around. I've heard reports of SPP primers starting to appear locally for $69.99/1000 but I cannot confirm it. My closes local store has had "some Turkish named" primers for weeks for $89.99/1000. THey have not had primers for at least 2+ years, and last week they had over 50k.

I'm not pessimistic either. I do believe we will eventually see primers down to <$70/1000. The $30 days might be in the rear view.... :)

I caved 6 months ago and bought some CCI online for $8x something per 1000. With ammo at $36/100 for 9mm range ammo it still makes sense to reload using an .08-.09 primer.

-Jeff
 
Wednesday, I saw all sizes of CCI and Federal Primers except for SPP and SPP magnum for $99.99/1000. CCI Benchrest and Federal Gold Cup for $149.99/1000 at my favorite shop. I don't need any and don't have $100 bucks that is not already needed elsewhere. If they had any SPP and I had the spare cash, I would have got some. It is good to see the inventory. I think it was still there because of price. But I am sure a lot of it was sold. There is another local store that is very high overhead, I am curious what their price will be. 100 bucks seems to be the box store rate here if they have them.
 
It wasn’t that long ago, the price everyone was complaining about and refused to pay, was $60/ brick. Now $69/brick is “good”? Nope.
I’m glad to see supply returning but I’m just not going go for the sunshine blowing and patience preaching.

It sucks. I know it sucks. I’m not going to pretend it doesn’t suck. I’m going to embrace the suck and buy what I want or need and just deal with the prices when it is unavoidable. I have had my patience tested. I’m negative. Forget griping, it’s useless. Buy or don’t and just learn to be happy when something hits the market. It’s like meat in Cuba or Venezuela - ignore the rot and just be happy you have it.
 
GeoDudeFlorida said:
It wasn’t that long ago, the price everyone was complaining about and refused to pay, was $60/ brick. Now $69/brick is “good”? Nope.
I’m glad to see supply returning but I’m just not going go for the sunshine blowing and patience preaching.

It sucks. I know it sucks. I’m not going to pretend it doesn’t suck. I’m going to embrace the suck and buy what I want or need and just deal with the prices when it is unavoidable. I have had my patience tested. I’m negative. Forget griping, it’s useless. Buy or don’t and just learn to be happy when something hits the market. It’s like meat in Cuba or Venezuela - ignore the rot and just be happy you have it.
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Cuba…reminded me of this other stash of mine accumulated when I was a smoker. I wonder how many primers I could get in trade?

(Twenty years ago $100.00 worth of Habanos for personal use could be bought legally in Cuba & brought back to the US provided the travel was for business and was itself legal. Surprising how much legal business travel to Cuba in those days. Don’t know about today.)

4F815D20-0AA2-42B5-A5FE-ED96F67BC40D.jpeg
 
Yesterday I paid $ 7.00 for a medium cup of coffee and a bagel. And it wasn't at rip-off Starbucks. Later in the day took my daughter for a treat, paid $ 11.00 for 2 ice cream cones. Almost fainted both times...so primers at 15 cents a piece is what I expect from the barbarians and their supporters. Staying home more in the future.........
 
Encouraging to see most classes of primers returning to shelves. BPI is now offering to sell 4 cases (5 bricks per case) of Cheddite 209 primers on a single order. That is 20,000 primers for somewhere in the $55 to $60 per brick range. Not what they were, but compared to some other online sources selling the same thing for $75 per brick, it does offer hope that some sense of sanity is returning in the not too distant future.

Most bothersome thing I've seen was back in the summer......was in retail store of large, well known supplier (not Graf's or Midway) and they had a stack of 10 to 15 bricks of Remington 9 1/2 LRP. Price was around $97 per k. What was troubling was clerk said they had originally marked them at $75, but someone in management say that and told them to raise it. Implication was not so much out of profit margin, but because they could. Same logic as GoneBroker sellers. Gouging or simply wise retailing? Price has now caught up to that level.

My prediction is if/when (and that is uncertain) supply returns to the shelves in abundance, prices may fall back to a normal profit margin (like BPI is doing now with Cheddite primers), but will not go back to anything close to what they may have been as recent as a year or so back. Cost of anything is always relative. Inflation has set the bar higher.

Realistically, it all hinges on what Vista decides to do. Make primers available again, and in abundance, and at what wholesale price. They won't sell them at a loss and retailers won't either.
 
From my observation primer prices are "converging" for lack of a better term.

For most of this shortage, there was market clearing price, which was often very high, probabally closer to $20 per 100.
Then there was the "retail price" which was elevated, but not absurdly so, $7.99 or so.
At retail price nothing stayed on the shelves.
Now we are reaching a point where market clearing price and retail price are finally meeting. Retail stores can keep primers on the shelves, which shows this.
However, to converge like this, retail prices have been going up, not down. So while market clearing price is in fact falling, if you go to the store to buy primers they are likely to cost more than they did a year ago.
So if retail primers are still moving at a very healthy clip at ~$10 a tray then I don't see price drops coming down quickly. Short of a severe recession, I think we are looking at future shelf prices.

Howa 9700 said:
Gouging or simply wise retailing?
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Gouging is not a real economic concept. They raised the price because the market clearing price was higher than what was marked on the shelves.

"I've been through several of these shortages" yeah, but this one is not like the others. It is probabally the deepest, longest, and most severe of its kind. Worse, there has been significant inflation, which was not a factor in previous shortages. Since January 2020, $5.99 has become $6.92 according to official CPI figures, which are very likely an underestimate.
 
Will Munny said:
Worse, there has been significant inflation, which was not a factor in previous shortages.
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Inflation and stagflation were major factors in the late’70’s/early’80’s shortages. There were a whole lot fewer handloaders back then and more people kept years/decades of supplies on-hand for the atomic holocaust. Underground bunkers, dried food stores, water tanks and diesel hoarders… everyone was a “prep’r” back then. That made it less of a panic. And, the news had more important things to talk about back then than ammunition prices, too. Gas lines, race riots, environmental disasters, the “scourge of the Vietnam veteran”… drug wars were not a thing yet, as far as Walter Cronkite was concerned. That was later. Anyway, yes there have been other reloading supplies shortages where inflation was a factor. They were just a little before The Internet became people’s sole source of information.
 
gifbohane said:
Yesterday I paid $ 7.00 for a medium cup of coffee and a bagel. And it wasn't at rip-off Starbucks. Later in the day took my daughter for a treat, paid $ 11.00 for 2 ice cream cones. Almost fainted both times...so primers at 15 cents a piece is what I expect from the barbarians and their supporters. Staying home more in the future.........
Click to expand...
What kind of coffee is that? Himalayan dingle berries?
 
GeoDudeFlorida said:
Inflation and stagflation were major factors in the late’70’s/early’80’s shortages. There were a whole lot fewer handloaders back then and more people kept years/decades of supplies on-hand for the atomic holocaust. Underground bunkers, dried food stores, water tanks and diesel hoarders… everyone was a “prep’r” back then. That made it less of a panic. And, the news had more important things to talk about back then than ammunition prices, too. Gas lines, race riots, environmental disasters, the “scourge of the Vietnam veteran”… drug wars were not a thing yet, as far as Walter Cronkite was concerned. That was later. Anyway, yes there have been other reloading supplies shortages where inflation was a factor. They were just a little before The Internet became people’s sole source of information.
Click to expand...

There was not a shortage of primers in the 70s/80s that in any way resembles what has become increasingly endemic since the 90's.
Nor was everyone a pepper in the 70s/80s, in fact few people were. I'm not even going to bother with the rest of the off topic rambling.
So no, inflation has not been a factor in previous primer shortages. And stagflation would not be a factor even if it was occurring as it does not refer to a price phenomenon..
 
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