Dirty nickle cases on new Gold Dots

[Fumbler]

I purchased 6 boxes of Speer LE 124gr +P Gold Dots.
The lot number is E12Q31.

I opened one box just to take a look and the cases had some sort of white-ish residue on them. All 6 boxes have the residue. Most cases have just a very light amount and a few have a larger amount.
The cases do not appear as polished as the cases on previous Gold Dots that I have purchased.

What is this stuff? It almost looks like case sizing lube.
Do you think it's just as reliable?

I'll shoot Speer an email but wanted to know if any of you had any personal experience with this.

 

[dfariswheel]

I "think" it may be from the plastic box insert.
I used to find this white powdery reside on my .380 and 9mm Winchester Silvertips.

In that case, the residue was from the Styrofoam insert.
It has zero affeect on the ammo.

 

[atomd]

It's common. I've shot through tons of boxes of Gold Dots and I think a good amount of them were like that. I never had any problems. Tumbling media maybe? I dunno. I've found buildups of it inside the hollow point cavity pretty often too. I did just buy some recently that did not have any residue on them though. I know this doesn't help but you're not alone anyways. Maybe someone else will shed some light on this. I wouldn't worry about the ammo working though.

 

[CWL]

Could also be bullet lube that has migrated from the bullet to the shell casing during transport and shipping.

 

[Fumbler]

Speer replied to my question and told me it's probably just "dusting."

I don't know what dusting is, but that sounds like what some of you described.

This residue is not dust. It's waxy feeling, like resizing lube.
I suspect it's resizing lube.
Another thought I had is it could possibly be dusting along with high humidity, thus turning into a stickier residue.

I shot 50 rounds. All worked fine.
The white residue on the spent cases had apparently picked up a higher than normal amount of powder fouling leaving some dirtier spots on the outside of the cases.
I have enough confidence in the ammo to use it in my carry guns. But, I wonder if enough of the residue could accumulate in the chamber and cause reliability issues. This is a moot point for me though. I always clean my guns after every range trip and I can't afford to shoot hundreds of Gold Dots anyway. It should never build up enough to cause problems.

I'm keeping this ammo and I trust it. I will probably wipe all of the rounds clean just for peace of miind.

Now I'm really just curious what it is. I asked Speer to explain dusting to me and I also described the residue a little better.
Hopefully they'll give me some insight.

Could also be bullet lube that has migrated from the bullet to the shell casing during transport and shipping.

I don't think they use bullet lube in any part of the process. Well, they probably use it when they swage/hollow out the bullets. However, there's no residue at all on the bullets, just the cases. That's what makes me think it's resizing lube. Most everyone uses carbide dies to load pistols, but if you were running a high production operation then you might use lube to save wear on the dies.

That's all just a guess.

 

[rcmodel]

The loaded ammo is undoubtly tumbled after loading to remove any traces of die burnishing or fingerprints from inspectors.

I would guess the "dusting" is either left-over polishing compound from the final polishing, or a dry lube they use during the loading & packaging operation to make them run through the machines slicker without hanging up.

rc