.22 Ammo production increase

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There really is no 22 shortage " Today "... I can buy 22 ammo by the case from many different manufacturers... " today "... the biggest gripe I see is that, most people do not want to pay 2015 prices. The price of 22 ammo has gone up dramatically over the last five years... Ive never had a problem buying 22 ammo.. and I shoot a lot, and always have 5 bricks to a case on hand...

I don't want to be a boo bird, but manufactures like CCI are running 24/7 and paying time and a half and double time, to keep the line going.... CCI produces 4,000,000 , ( 4 Million rounds a day ) ... they are cashing in on the demand... their prices are based on demand. So as long as they are selling it.. even at the higher prices, that are cashing in... So my though s , if you have the money, you can buy 22 ammo.

This Patriot manufacturer is seeing opportunity, and is willing to invest 35 million dollars to get into production , so they can cash in on the demand, and the windfall profits... I would not expect to see the prices drop, because all these manufacturers will grab as much profit in a very high demand market...
 
If a guy can't walk into the same stores he did 5 years ago and buy .22 ammo, regardless of the price.....That is what I call a shortage.
 
ColtPythonElite said:
If a guy can't walk into the same stores he did 5 years ago and buy .22 ammo, regardless of the price.....That is what I call a shortage.
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Well there is your problem... " Walking into a store " ... mom and pop stores have large over head, add to that, the price of wholesale ammo.. and mom and pop wont keep much on hand, and usually, if Mom and pop, keeps the same inventory amount, one customer can buy all they have...

Enter " 2015 " go on the internet.. you will find the same prices that mom and pop find, when they buy their ammo... you can find dozens of on line store with plenty of stock, again this is 2015, and not 1990.... many member of my 5,000 member gun club will go in on a case and spread the cost of shipping, ( 15 dollars ) over 3 members...

If you are a smart consumer, you will stop thinking this is 1990...and get with the program.

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My area Wal-Mart's have no stock on hand of .22 ammo. Demand is greater than supply this equals a shortage. I can get it on line at the inflated prices bit I don't want to. I do come across it at the reasonable price but it sales out fast. Demand is greater than supply equals shortage and price gouging.
 
Evil-Twin: I don't understand what the photo of .45+P ammo has to do with .22 LR. You cannot walk into any store in Northern Colorado and buy more than two boxes of .22 LR if you are lucky enough to find any in stock. Most of the on-line ammo supply websites I peruse usually only have imported .22 in stock. If CCI is running 24/7 I would sure like to know where it is going. I don't believe your theory about small stores not ordering is true because I know the local stores around here limit customers to two boxes and still sell out at current pricing so I do not believe they are afraid to order due to cost.
 
posted by evil twin
If you are a smart consumer, you will stop thinking this is 1990...and get with the program

To me a smart customer will not pay .10 to .12 cents a round plus shipping. Which is what you see most of the time.
 
fouled bore said:
My area Wal-Mart's have no stock on hand of .22 ammo. Demand is greater than supply this equals a shortage. I can get it on line at the inflated prices bit I don't want to. I do come across it at the reasonable price but it sales out fast. Demand is greater than supply equals shortage and price gouging.
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Yep, this is my definition of a shortage, too.:neener:
 
Both are correct. If you limit yourself to just brick and mortar stores locally you then compete with all the other non internet users who want walk in availability of ammo. That's a large demographic in the over-45 crowd, with a lot of shooters.

Pick up a laptop and hit some keys, you could have bricks delivered in days to your doorstep - but that requires advance planning and foresight for what many of the older purchasers demand be an impromptu impulse decision at the last minute.

If the local merchandisers were getting a brick and then selling by the box over a months time, and demand goes up to the point the first purchaser buys it all - then it's going to be weeks with their normal resupply to get another brick. And, no, they don't get to order 10X as much to make up for it because everybody has been doing that. The ammo suppliers were forced to ration and they get their one brick.

What about the guy who bought the whole brick instead of a box? He slowly shoots it up a box at a time like normal, goes back in two months later - no ammo. His panic buying and hoarding is now what he has to deal with. It effects other shooters by a multiplier of the brick vs box.

Makers are in overtime because buyers upped demand beyond the systems ability to keep it on the shelf. It was comfortable at a box a week purchase, when it jumps up to a brick anytime it can be found, at any price? Now it's a suppliers market and you get what you deserve.

Same thing happened with AR15's. but the much higher costs means impulse buying was much less a factor. That market is fixed, prices are lower than ever, buy AR's and parts now as they haven't ever been better. .22? Still getting hoarded - if you buy 10x more than you normally shoot, what else should we call it? - it's lucky to even get on the shelf, and it sells for the going rate - not the pennies per round we enjoyed years ago.

If someone used to buy boxes and now buys a brick at any opportunity - the one purchase affects 10 other buyers. So, if ten percent of you would stop buying bricks to pile onto the bricks you already have, things would ease up quite a bit.

Except now the standard purchase is bricks, not boxes. And it's making everyone's cheerios' a smelly mess. There's plenty of ammo to go around - if you spend the money and use ALL the resources to find it. There's only a shortage for those who don't buy on the internet and won't pay the higher prices.
 
I was in my local "Mom & Pop" LGS over the weekend. Very small quantities of .22LR, and only selling in 50-round boxes. My wife stopped in the new Gander Mtn and said the .22 shelves were almost bare there, too. She got the limit of 2 boxes.

While it seems to me that the dearth of long rifle seems to be easing a bit, it's by no means over. Not here in the St. Louis area, anyway.

Not sure what you have against Mom & Pop stores, Evil-Twin, but my preference is always to buy there first. Mine gives me the best prices of any store within a 50 mile radius, including the big name places. As it happens, I used to be able to walk in there and buy as many bricks as I wanted. If he was out, he'd order more for me. Now, it's both more expensive and nearly unavailable. He laughs when I ask him if he can order it. His reply, "Sure, I can order anything. Doesn't mean they'll ship it to me."

Sure sounds like a shortage to me.
 
Imagine if toilet paper were only available via online delivery, with high price variability and frequent sell-outs, or at $20/roll at TP shows from private sellers. Would anybody dispute that a shortage exists? No, they wouldn't. Yet some people insist that comparable circumstance do not constitute a shortage of .22lr.
 
If you are a smart consumer, you will stop thinking this is 1990...and get with the program.
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You must own an ammo plant. :D

But seriously, it sounds like you are saying we should just give in and pay the 300 to 400% increase some are charging. I for one will not do it.

Prices will come back down to slightly over what they were before the craziness. Many places have not increased prices, except for normal small increases we would see anyway. Not all suppliers have jacked up the price.

You are right about one thing, it is hard for the mom and pop store to compete with the internet. :)
 
Walkalong said:
You must own an ammo plant. :D

But seriously, it sounds like you are saying we should just give in and pay the 300 to 400% increase some are charging. I for one will not do it.

Prices will come back down to slightly over what they were before the craziness. Many places have not increased prices, except for normal small increases we would see anyway. Not all suppliers have jacked up the price.

You are right about one thing, it is hard for the mom and pop store to compete with the internet. :)
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I fully agree with you.
 
Maybe of interest: Cabela's recently changed their .22 purchase limits. For the past 2+ years they have limited .22 purchases to two 50rd boxes or one 100+ rd box (so if they had 350rd boxes you could buy one), otherwise your max was 100rds.

This past weekend the signs had been adjusted to limit buyers to 500rd total.

They had ammo to sell, too.
 
The reason you can 'go into any store' and find 22 is because many people refuse to pay the inflated prices. There is still a huge pent up demand that will only start to give way once the prices are back down to reasonable levels. As soon as I can find it for $20-$22 a brick again I'll stock up 5,000-10,000 rounds and I don't hardly ever shoot 22. All the other calibers that went way up are back down to pre-Sandy Hook prices or lower. 22 will be the same just not for awhile.
 
To me a smart customer will not pay .10 to .12 cents a round plus shipping. Which is what you see most of the time.
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I heard that!

.22 ammo is a commodity just like 9 mm. The difference is 9 mm has come back to pre-2011 prices and .22 hasn't.

Because of that I haven't purchased any .22 since 2011 and I won't until it goes back down to pre-2011 prices. .22 ammo isn't worth 0.12 a round when it only costs about 0.03 to manufacture. 50% markup is about where it was pre-2011, now it's at 200%.

There's a bubble here and because there is so much of it being produced and so much of it being stock piled, soon you will be lucky to sell it for pre-2011 prices.

If you don't believe that you weren't paying attention when the real estate bubble burst in 2006 and everyone went under water on their houses. The people buying and holding .22 ammo now are the same people who thought real estate was worth the inflated prices of 2005.

How soon we forget the lessons of the free market.
 
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I heard that! .22 ammo is a commodity just like 9 mm. The difference is 9 mm has come back to pre-2011 prices and .22 hasn't.
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Historically, 2000-2011, the bulk pack .22lr ammo ran about 1/4th the price per round of the cheapest 9mm FMJ practice ammo. Currently with ~$0.21 per round 9mm FMJ ~$0.05 .22lr ($25/500) would be about par with current 9mm FMJ pricing.

.22lr ammo at prices twice this is plentiful, its the "normal" priced ammo that is scarce. I've found some recently at Academy and Walmart, but with quantity limits and often empty shelves its not worth a trip to the store with only ammo on the shopping list.

At $0.10/round I'll shoot my 9mm reloads instead of buying .22lr ammo.
 
I live in Southern Missouri and no one here has seen ANY rimfire ammo at ANY price for several years now. Walmart? Academy? Dunham Sports? Forget about it. Empty shelves. I'm starting to wonder if it's ever coming back. Yes I know I could go online but I refuse to buy ammo online and pay HazMat and shipping fees.
 
While I believe there is a shortage of .22 ammo, the cost has more to do with the devaluation of the dollar. Barry O prints boat loads on paper dollars and the worth of that dollar drops like a stone.
 
Plan2Live said:
And don't forget that Tulip bubble back in 1627!
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Haha, this is an excellent example my godfather used when the AR-15 market was crazy post-Sandy Hook. I already had my stockpile so I wasn't buying, but we were talking about how cheap they would be if the ban didn't happen. And they are now. When you can pick up a brand new AR15 for $450 it seems crazy they were $2,000+ during the 'panic'.
 
Steel Horse Rider said:
Evil-Twin: I don't understand what the photo of .45+P ammo has to do with .22 LR. You cannot walk into any store in Northern Colorado and buy more than two boxes of .22 LR if you are lucky enough to find any in stock. Most of the on-line ammo supply websites I peruse usually only have imported .22 in stock. If CCI is running 24/7 I would sure like to know where it is going. I don't believe your theory about small stores not ordering is true because I know the local stores around here limit customers to two boxes and still sell out at current pricing so I do not believe they are afraid to order due to cost.
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The photo of the 45 ACP is for my EDC... like most who try to dissect, a comment.. you missed the gigantic MIDWAY USA Box.... the place where I by most of my ammo... I didn't have convenient photo of 22 ammo.. But the " YEAH BUT "mentality is alive and well with those who look for any out...much like you.. There are literally 40 or 50 different places to find in stock ammo on line.... I just grabbed a few rounds and took a photo just for you... some of us buy ammo on line, ad some of us cry about not finding it but in reality are too cheap to pay for it because they have selective memory and are still living in 2005

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High Standard Victor comp. 22 lr
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I built this 22 bench gun... I have 80 hours just in the stock... custom sporter comp barrel, custom 2.5 oz. trigger,
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I'm in a small town just east of Boise, Idaho. I've only be able to buy three 50 count and three 100 count .22lr here in the last 3 or 4 years! In Boise I bought four 100 count boxes last year over a three month period. Don't say there's no shortage. Also don't pee on my back and tell me it's raining; same thing.
 
More .22 ammo availability is always a good thing. I still haven't seen .22 ammo in Meijer since 2012.
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