Ammo prices - then and now

[Slater]

I have an ammo can with a quantity of 12 gauge 00 buckshot and slugs that I bought a long time ago and never got around to using. The shotgun I had at the time was sold and the ammo got put aside and essentially forgotten about over the years.

The below box of Remington 00 Buck was purchased in 1988 at (of all places) K-Mart, for $3.57. The box of Winchester ammo next to it was bought at the local Wallyworld last week for $5.67.

According to the the Department Of Labor's online CPI Inflation Calculator, $3.57 in 1988 would be equal to $7.05 today. I guess back then I never gave much thought to ammo prices but it does make you see how the value of the dollar changes over time.

 

[wally]

In 2005 I was buying CCI aluminum Blazer for $3.86/50, good luck finding any 9mm ammo for much less than $12/50 now. The Inflation calculator says $3.86 then is $4.62 now.

 

[MagnumDweeb]

You also need to take into account that wages were better back then for a lot of folks in 1988 believe it or not. Getting a college degree was still incredibly valuable (still valuable today but unless you're an accountant, lawyer, doctor, Ivy Leaguer, or engineer [math and sciences professional]) for most folks coming out of college.

Now wages are frozen, if not slipping, and the costs of other goods and commodities related to shooting are up as well. I remember when I could fill my tank for less than $40 (Durango with V8 and four-wheel drive capable), drive to the range, buy ammo at the range, shoot a few hundred rounds of centerfire ammo, and not spent a hundred dollars. Today, forget about it. Plan to go to the gym first thing in the morning with a few guns locked in the truck (now a Ford Sports Trac with V6), get breakfast from Dunkin Donuts, take mostly reloads with me (they shoot better oddly enough), have the fiancee in tow (thankfully she loves shooting), then after a cursory washup hit the nearby coffee house where we relax and work on ebooks, then go to Costco for food shopping for the month, and then go home. Oh and only do this once a month.

I used to be able to go every two weeks straight to the range in back. Now I have to budget for it (I don't really need to but I'm a penny pincher) not to be throwing away hundreds of dollars. Now I make my own black powder for when I shoot at my buddy's property (which we only do once a month not to tick off the neighbors a mile away), reload like a fiend (which I've come to enjoy since my fiancee and I can do it together, get a Lee mount-free reloading press [great arm workout]), and if I'm lucky I get to shoot twice a month (never miss the opportunity to shoot on my buddies property because I can keep all my spent brass without worry of it getting swept onto the range).

It's changed folks. What used to be a past-time for a lot of folks is becoming more and more a hobby for well-to-do folks. If you are on the lower end of middle class with a family, it becomes a difficult hobby to enjoy. If you are lower class, you are doing the bare minimum if at all. Hell shooting is why I got into writing romance ebooks (yeah let's call them ebooks and not call'em Fifty-Shades of Grey, more realistic, better written, yet not nearly as successful porn books). So I could shoot more.

If I couldn't reload I wouldn't shoot nearly as much. This way I get to shoot a few hundred rounds a month mixed up of .308, .44 Mag, .357 mag, 9mm, .38 special, .30-06, 8mm, .30-30, and .454 Casull.

 

[oneounceload]

I still shoot sporting clays at least once per week and try to do it twice (especially if there is a tournament). THAT gets expensive, so I have basically stopped going to my local club where they do not have sporting clays. I also have cut WAY back on pistol and .22 shooting. Not my desire, but the way it is in today's economy

 

[mboylan]

From the mid 90s to the mid 00s ammo prices got insanely cheap. No one ever thought of blasting through a brick of .22 back in the old days. Every shot had to count.

 

[EdJennings]

Circa 1955, when I was 8 years old, I had the pretty much unrestricted use of my Dad's Marlin 39A. Not a Golden, just a 39A. Ballard rifiling, no gimmicks like a gold trigger. Anyway, I would periodically make the track to Burton's General Store, where I could buy ammo. Yes, gentle reader, Mr. Burton would sell ammo to a 8 year old if he knew it was ok with their parents. .22 LR was pricey. About .29 per box. Shorts were only .22. Longs, which I haven't seen in decades, was in the middle at .24-.25. I frequently bought Longs to pinch a penny. My allowance was .26 per week. A quarter plus a penny for tax. I also had to buy my BB supply from this, so buying a box of reall ammo was a big undertaking. None was wasted. The ammo is long, long gone. I still have the Marlin and the memories of growing up in a different time.

 

[Constrictor]

you can say the same thing about everything. ammo aint exempt.

I found this ticket in my drawer today.

 

[Warp]

Inflation at work.

 

[Zoogster]

1990s to about 2006 had great ammo prices.
The cost of ammo compared to typical incomes was very low.
Ammo has increased in cost well beyond inflation.


For example I recall being able to buy 100 round value packs of 12 gauge target loads and birdshot, like the 1 1/8 oz federal at Walmart for $14 in late 2006 and was around $15 with tax. It had been around $12 a year or so prior. Two was a little over $20.
Was over $20 for a single once by 2009, and almost at $28-29 before sales tax now in 2013.

It has more than doubled in price in 7 years.

Unlike many other types of ammunition there was never a run on it. It was not subject to the same panic buying as many other rounds. So I think it is a good representation of ammunition cost changes.



The heyday of buying power in the nation was probably mid to late 1990s. When the US had an advanced nation, was benefiting from tech booms, and there was still a vast number of primitive third world nations.
Today many of the nations that were once source of cheap resources they had minimal local demand for are modernized and the demand on everything is much higher. They have a lot more uses for it than just shipping it off to North America and Europe as was the case for a large percentage of the world's resources prior.

The buying power and to a related degree quality of life of the average person in buying power for a given age bracket will probably never be as good as it was 1990s to mid 2000s. That was the top of our game as a nation so to speak. The rest of the world is not going to go back to an undeveloped state. So even if we had a strong economy we will never benefit from dirt cheap prices of natural resources from undeveloped nations to that extent again.
(Although life seems to have been pretty good in the 1950s. Most of the nation didn't complete high school based on education statistics, but a single bread winner in a typical household could pay all the bills, have a decent home, vehicle, and provide a good quality life for an average family. Now even two similar working parents wouldn't have near the quality of life only one could provide before.)


However ammunition increases is well beyond those changes.

 

[M2 Carbine]

Note the dates and prices.

This WWB 9mm cost $4.38 on sale. The regular price was $6.00 a box.



The Barnaul 9x18 cost $70 a case (1,000 rounds).
Wolf 7.62x39 cost $45 to $70 a case (1,000 rounds.
Wal Mart 550 bulk packs were about $14.
30.06 was $200 for a thousand rounds.

 

[Warp]

2006 or so was a great time for ammo costs.

I didn't buy my first gun until August of 2005 and I just didn't realize how well priced ammunition really was. Not that I could have afforded much more at that time anyway. But boy...I wish I could go back to 2006 as well as to about mid 2011 and tell myself to buy more ammo.

 

[M2 Carbine]

I wish I could go back to 2006 as well as to about mid 2011 and tell myself to buy more ammo.

The thing is ammo and reloading components will almost always seem high when you are buying them.
But even though most of the times I stretched the budget to buy during a sale I never regretted it.

I think most every time I "went overboard" buying "too much" it ended better than money in the bank.

 

[wally]

I think most every time I "went overboard" buying "too much" it ended better than money in the bank.

At one point in 2006 I had more ammo than I had room to store it, literally having cases on the floor underneath the center of my car in the garage. My wife said "why do you need so much ammo?" A scant few years later she was saying "you should have bought more!"

I could only dream my 401K would so as well as my "retirement ammo" investment has done!

 

[berettashotgun]

One penny a round was the MOST my Dad would pay for 22lr.
He would bitch -n -moan to the clerk at OTASCO about the cost.

 

[M2 Carbine]

I could only dream my 401K would so as well as my "retirement ammo" investment has done!

For sure.
If my 401K money was spent on bullets and brass, back when I bought this stuff, I would be a lot of money ahead.

 

[mboylan]

.....

 

[mboylan]

Note the dates and prices.

This WWB 9mm cost $4.38 on sale. The regular price was $6.00 a box.



The Barnaul 9x18 cost $70 a case (1,000 rounds).
Wolf 7.62x39 cost $45 to $70 a case (1,000 rounds.
Wal Mart 550 bulk packs were about $14.
30.06 was $200 for a thousand rounds.

That same box would have been almost $10 in 1986. Ammo prices fell a huge amount in the 90s.

 

[oldcelt]

There is a very informative article in American Rifleman magazine about the ammo shortage and prices. It will answer a lot of questions.

 

[Queen_of_Thunder]

There is a very informative article in American Rifleman magazine about the ammo shortage and prices. It will answer a lot of questions.

That piece of unresearched spin. Ha.

 

[oldcelt]

I would suggest Queen of Thunder raed the article before comment. It shows hard stats.

 

[Queen_of_Thunder]

I read the article. Its weak and frankly does not reflect reality. Its nothing but spin. An effort to keep the masses quite. There are no answers in the article. Fact is demand is way up with the millions of new shooters. Commodities are in good supply and prices are stable. Its been a full year and ammo is still sketchy and people want to know where he ammo is going because we are not seeing it on the ammo shelves.

 

[MagnumDweeb]

Queen I must say, this is becoming most enjoyable discussing theory with you. I mean that will all sincerity. We may not agree, but we do try to reach the heart of the matter, and that is all anyone can ask.

Even though ammo manufacturers are supposedly cranking ammo out by the full load at their factories. There is the very real chance of equivalent deflation in the market. Meaning a bubble, and I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people are waiting on it. I mean I know I am and I'm seeing the first indicators when it comes to guns with AR-15s in pawnshops for $499 that look like they have never been shot.

So ammo shouldn't be too far behind. With that said, if you own a gun shop and guns have started to slow their move, how much of your capital are you going to tie up in ammo. Yes you could make a profit either way if you pour your capital into ammo right now, but at what point does the amount of capital you expend net a valuable ROI.

I know business owners that are millionares and billionares (okay I only know two billionares and no I can't get them to share with me, the cheap bastards lol), and they have very complex thought patterns on business. It wouldn't surprise me if this was going on not necessarily at the gun shop level but the distributor level.

If as a distributor you know demand is starting to slow while supply is remaining steady, do you load up on X amount ammo to make a profit of Y, when if you wait three months for demand to slow more, your net profit for waiting can be Z, where Z is greater. I'm taking an analogy from a real estate developer i know (one of the billionares) and am using it poorly as an equivalence to ammo but it is the best I got. Still the guy made out like a bandit and enjoyed a three year semi-vacation while the market tanked and is jumping back in before it tanks again in 2016.

Profit margins are a difficult thing to quantify and that's why there are tens of thousands of "experts" who get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to do the analysis. Remember some of the big ammo companies are publicly traded and their production and sales are based on the bottom line, not ensuring an ammo consuming public. I doubt distributors would be far behind that mentality as well.

So if it seems shady, it likely is. Not because of direct government malfeasance but because Corporate America, or the very least its mentality, is ever present in guns and ammo. Something the usual gun owner and shooter doesn't have as most are salt of the earth honest types who believe you have direct markup on each good sold that typically doesn't exceed a certain amount, rather than a voracious over pricing of a good's value that ensures billionares while fleecing the American public of jobs and wages.

Okay no more time on democraticunderground this week. Back to the Wall Street Journal and Shotgun News for me.

 

[Warp]

Even though ammo manufacturers are supposedly cranking ammo out by the full load at their factories. There is the very real chance of equivalent deflation in the market. Meaning a bubble, and I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people are waiting on it. I mean I know I am and I'm seeing the first indicators when it comes to guns with AR-15s in pawnshops for $499 that look like they have never been shot.

So ammo shouldn't be too far behind.

Nope.

It doesn't work that way and it won't work that way.

Just like it didn't work that way last time.

 

[MagnumDweeb]

Warp. Are you telling me in 2010 ammo prices didn't come off their panic pricing, or by 2011 for that matter. No prices didn't return to where they were prior to 2008 but they did go down a little to another new normal. We are going to be seeing a new normal and Walmart's prices will be the indicator for the most part I believe.

People keep buying like mad in the hopes of creating hoards they didn't have before, and new shooters are coming about everyday. Still there is a lessening in demand, albeit a slight one. And no provider of goods wants to be stuck with any product they can't maximize their profit on. And so sellers aren't in a rush to invest their capital so fully in ammo.

 

[Warp]

Warp. Are you telling me in 2010 ammo prices didn't come off their panic pricing, or by 2011 for that matter. No prices didn't return to where they were prior to 2008 but they did go down a little to another new normal. We are going to be seeing a new normal and Walmart's prices will be the indicator for the most part I believe.

People keep buying like mad in the hopes of creating hoards they didn't have before, and new shooters are coming about everyday. Still there is a lessening in demand, albeit a slight one. And no provider of goods wants to be stuck with any product they can't maximize their profit on. And so sellers aren't in a rush to invest their capital so fully in ammo.

They didn't come down to less than they were before the spike. Yes, I am telling you that in 2006 ammo was less expensive than in 2010 or 2011.

And I am telling you that ammo in 2011 will be less expensive than ammo in 2014 or 2015

Sure, ammo won't be too hard to find in awhile (well, anything but .22lr isn't too hard to find right now) but it will darn sure be more expensive than it was before the panic.