At One Time .22 Rimfire Rounds.....

Were not quite that expensive:



From a 1909 Sears & Roebuck catalog.

 

I am sure there are others older that remember cheaper but when I was a kid, dad would buy my brother and I each a brick (500rds) of 22 LR for $9.99 at the local K-mart and we would burn through that in a weekend trip to the family farm.

My grandfather probably bought ammo as cheap as the OP's advertisement. Do you know what years that is from?

 

Just found a box of 100 CCI solids for 13.79.
Only bought one box. Hope th next guy does the same

 

Yea, but you had to walk uphill both ways to the store and back to buy those back in 1909.

 

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$0.36 in 1909 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $10.29 today, an increase of $9.93 over 112 years.. [https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1909?amount=0.36]



CCI's not exactly the cheapest - nor is it currently available - and Midway is hardly Sears-Roebuck... but it's a reasonable comparison. The actual consumer price of "quality" .22 Long rim fire has increased $1.70 in the past 112 years.

 

I barely remember $0.79 a box for cheap Remingtons. I have a box from my grandfathers mess which came from western auto and a box of 50 was $0.19. I need to dig that box-o-mess out and go through it. It was basically his junk drawer.

 

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But, seriously, Sears-Roebuck was mail-order. You got it delivered to your door/post office. They were Amazon before there was an Amazon.

 

Even in major population areas like northern Virginia just 50 years ago, there were some small Sears catalog stores where you’d go in, look at the catalog, place the order, and pay by check or cash. The attraction I guess was you didn’t have to mail your payment with your order and it was thus quicker and more secure. You could have your order delivered to that small store too. Like cabelas ship to store.

 

I have a couple of boxes of Winchester Wildcats that were bought at Barkers in 1967. The price on each box is $.49. a penny a round. We will never see those days again.

 

I can remember walking into a big Montgomery Wards store that that had merchandise in stock. I bought a box of Winchester long rifle ammo. I had 50 cents in my pocket and got change back although I don't remember the amount or the exact year. It was either 1949 or 50 I imagine. Long time ago..

 

i bought many, many bricks for $10.00
$.99/box. We did however, think that was a good price, and stocked up, especially if was good ammo.

 

Wow, Monkey Wards as my Dad called them. My first (1968ish) full size tool box was/is (still have it) a Ward’s Power Kraft. I had just bought my first car—a ‘62 VW bug.

 

These 500 count boxes were $7.95 ea when I bought all of them I could find. Have a rifle that likes them as much as Federal gold match and 500 were cheaper than 50 of “the good stuff” around 2002-2003. Turns out to have been a wise decision, hind sight being 20/20 and I haven’t needed to buy any when it’s been in high demand.


Academy had WWB 9mm for $3.99/50 and CCI Blazer 9mm was $2.99/50.

 

In the basement of the local police department they had a 50ft. shooting range were you could take a fire arm safety course or just practice, they charged .25 cents for 3 targets and supplied 22 rifles. There was a hardware store next door that sold a box of 50 remington 22's for .65 cents, and had no problems selling them to a 12 year old. Mom would give me $3 and I would buy 2 boxes of ammo and shoot for a couple of hours then go to the candy store after. Great way to spend a rainy Saturday afternoon.

 

We got the Sears and Roebuck and the Montgomery Ward catalogue spring and fall out on the farm. When the new catalogue came out the old one went out to the two holer out west of the house. Never did buy toilet paper. This would have been in the '40s.
Can't remember the price but the cheapest shells we could buy was a flat box of Remington Jets, they were shorts and the box looked like what Chicklets chewing gum came in. Us boys would walk the grader ditches picking up pop bottles and beer bottles, sell them at the local grocery and buy some Jets and head for the South Soloman river with our rifles. Those were the days!
I'm sorry, memory fades with time. They weren't Jets, they were Rockets.

 

Uphill both ways in the snow, and I’m in Florida!

 

I remember the early to mid 60s. Sporting goods in the A&S (Abraham & Strauss) department stores in NY paying about $0.50 a box for Remington 22 LR and a brick of 500 (10 boxes) was under a penny a round. Then too a buck bought much more than today. Gasoline as $0.25 a gallon at the Gulf station up the block. My memories were mid 50s to mid 60s (5 to 15 years old). Hell, you could buy a gun at the hardware store as easy as a pound of nails and that was NY actually NYC.

Ron

 

During a hurricane!

 

That’s about 8 cents a shot accounting to an inflation calculator. 8 cents per was a fairly common price in Jan 2020... now Jan 2021? Not even close .

Stay safe.

 

Was it $9.99 per brick, or two bricks for $9.99? If it was per brick, I was getting Federal 510 .22LR (blue box) for that price at Wal-Mart in the mid-2000s. I used to buy a brick every time I went there for anything, just because I could and because it was cheap. That's how I got through the last ammo panic.

I'm getting through this one because I bought rimfire, 9mm, and .223 by the case before the panic hit. And I ain't selling ...

 

Well the good old days for me actually include up to September 2019 when Walmart quit selling handgun ammo here. I used to stop by on the way to the range and buy just what I was going to shoot (9mm or 45ACP). Never looked at the price. Seldom kept more than a box of each at home. They were times of plenty. Then, they quit and I started reloading.

 

These are all full boxes:

But, these didn't make one's breath any "fresher" :

 

SGW, those are the ones. Dead Jackrabbits brought two bits back then and those rockets would kill them if the distance wasn't too great. The cotton tails were good fried.

 

We did too. I just wrote the full name for those that didn't know the shortened version. In fact I can't remember ever hearing them called anything except Monkey Wards or just Wards. I have a 1/2" drive socket set and several combination wrenches that were my dad's and they are still going strong. I found a pair of Montgomery Wards variable power binoculars in a junk store a few years ago and bought them just for nostalgia. The company I retired bought them and got them back on their feet, transferred the guy that did the bring back and appointed another to run them that ran them right back into the ground and the solution was to sell them. They didn't last long after that. The binoculars are in great condition but aren't very good at the upper part of their zoom range.

 

Over the years I have heard various camp fire wisdom about rimfire longevity. Some folks insisting they will expire on the shelf after XX number of years because they don't seal out moisture while other folks insist the rim prime is more durable and smokeless ignores moisture, for the most part. I've used rimfires that have lived in Florida for 50 years or more and they still go bang about as reliably as new shelf stock... I've also had whole boxes go poof or refuse to fire at all. Anybody care to share their own camp fire wisdom on rimfire longevity and proper care? Seems to me the biggest factor for poof vs. bang is not moisture but rough handling and compression. I've noticed (purely observational anecdotal evidence inserted here folks - grab yer salt licks!) it seems like the boxes that look like they've been crushed, dimpled tops from bullet noses, etc. go poof most often.