Do you think that the dealers in ammo are being up charged?

Thanks for explaining what it takes to be gouged. I would never have figuered it out on my own. By reading carefully you would have seen thatsaid I have seen prices on the internet that are examples of gouging. Nowhere did I say I bought anything at those prices.

 

Yep. That's fair.

 

Like I said I will not debate anyone on this.

 

My question remains..I have NO idea what any ammo reseller pays but it 'seems' online resellers have a TON of ammo, particularly popular ones like 9mm, 223, 38Spec and .380(the ones I look for)...BUT they are easily twice the $++ of the same ammo I occasionally find at some of the 'local' places..Cabela's, Murdocs, Sportsman's Warehouse, Bass Pro and Jax..so..why do some of these online resellers get so much preference when it comes to them buying ammo and why aren't manufacturer's enforcing some sort of maximum price?
I suspect, online places buy YUGE amounts and maybe at higher prices..so they get the nod when it comes to ammo...
wikiarms-.380-$.95 to $1.60 per..9mm-$70 per, 38S-$1.40 per..
Cabelas 2 days ago-9mm-$.32 per, 38 Special-$.60 per

 

Retail outlets - neighborhood gun shops car dealers, grocery stores - depend on sales. A good part of that is having customers purchase whatever at THEIR place and not purchase the same whatever somewhere else. To be brief, retailers will keep prices as low as they can. There are some who raise prices to suit the idea of the price-setter are easy to spot; they're the places having 'out of business' signs. At the same time, all businesses require a certain level of profit. The profit is what pays the help, pays the rent, lights, heating or cooling AND provides a living to the owner. If the owner's kids go hungry, there's no point in having a business.

The same with the upper end of the industry. They price their product at the minimal price to make sufficient profit to do the same, and provide sufficient money to the owners or shareholders to make it worthwhile to continue with their investment. Obviously, demand has gone up and the cost of production has gone up. One cannot sell a greater amount of products for the same price. (Which doesn't delight me, being a consumer). But that's how it is.

 

I think retailers are starting to adjust price to demand. And stuff is still selling out immediately. We have a real good panic on our hands guys and this one may be worst than the last

 

Because you can't, you're incorrect in your assumptions and assertions.

 

Plus wheel weights are being made from other things. Many states banned lead wheel weights.

Conversely, stick on weights aren't reusable like hammer on so there should be a bunch out there. Maybe not worth anything because of the backing or contamination idk. But there should be some out there.
I dont cast. I do reload. I'm also a car guy with a decent garage and a tire changer and a balancer. I change some tires occasionally for family and neighbors. I keep the old weights too but like I said.....they aren't necessarily all lead.

As far as lead prices a 4lb box of stick on weights is around 20 bucks. Hammer on are slightly cheaper. The more you buy the cheaper they are. The price hasn't really changed a lot over the past few years

 

Likewise the cost to keep the gun store open is roughly the same.

But *volume of sales* has fallen through the floor for many stores, because they can’t get as much ammo to sell as before. If they sell less ammo and they don’t make up that shortfall in revenue by raising prices on what they do sell, they will go out of business even if their wholesale cost didn’t change. The cost of inventory is not the only expense they have to cover.

That goes double for places with ranges, because they are not only losing revenue on sales volume, they are losing revenue from shooters cutting back on range trips.

Personally, I think the term “price gouging” is vastly overused. Raising prices to meet a surge in demand is not gouging, it is smart business, and healthy for both sellers and buyers. Increased revenue for manufacturers and retailers invites more manufacturing and retailing; increasing price reduces buying to the level that supply can sustain; and it feeds the revenue back into the supply chain instead of lining the pockets of scalpers.

 

Time for you to move on.

 

I used to love them as well. The prices on the 6.5 Grendel and 224 Valkyrie have gone up 63% from a year ago. Grendel is not on the site currently so I was using the last price I saw. Thankfully I'm in pretty good shape as I don't want to participate in this unless I have to. Is it gouging? I dont know.

 

Small retail dealers are not buying their ammo from their distributors these days. Their distributors do not have any ammo to sell to the small operations like a mom and pop gun store. As mentioned above, the big box stores have contracts in place, and what ammo the distributor has on hand goes to fulfill those contracts. So, the little guy ends up buying his ammo online, just like everyone else. As the online price goes up--which it does seemingly day-by-day--so too does the little guy's prices. If you think the price is too high, shut up and move on. The next guy will buy it.

 

In most cases, the wholesale distributors are increasing the price of ammo. Especially, the regional wholesalers. I have personally seen the invoices ay the LGS. In some instances, my local gun store has passed on purchasing offered ammo from some distributors because the price was astronomical. My LGS has literally only received 50 boxes of .380acp/50rds since May, all of it from low-tier distributors. Something with 30-30. None of the top ten distributors has shipped any. In a few instances, they have increased the price beyond their markup to discourage customers from coming in everyday and getting their one box per customer limit. With a high price, only the customers that have NO bullets for their firearm purchases at the high price. Keep in mind that that the constant out-of-stock means that the LGS store loses the opportunity to gain profit on every sale they could have made if they had inventory. It’s hard to pay the rent, utilities and everything else when you have nothing to sell.

 

I think the problem is most shops can only get a small amount at a time and they probably cannot order a large amount to get a discount. Just like anything wholesale, the more you buy, the lower the price, by a lot. I really don't think manufacturing prices have gone up much, maybe 5% or so due to increase in a lot of things, but it is not a normal time right now. Manufacturers can't meet the lead time and are probably not fulfilling orders placed many months ago. I'm in a similar business and although it is very rare, right now there are many large manufacturers who are having to explain why they can't meet your orders. You then have no choice but to buy from someone else at a much higher price and much lower quantities. I predict, when, which may be a year from now, prices will recover to a normal level, if something else doesn't shake it up again.

 

Most manufacturers raise their prices annually, typically right after when SHOT would happen (this month), so a nominal increase is regularly expected. Add in the covid issues, the raw material shortages, the personnel shortages, Remington off line for the most part recently, the current political animosity and possible pending new restrictions, and MILLIONS of new gun owners, and you have that "perfect storm" for ammo shortages. To those crying gouging, you are your own worst enemy by not buying when you could. It was CHEAP for 4 years and readily available, so if you didn't buy cheap and stack deep, that is on you if you have been around this longer than the last few months.

 

Since I paid 13.99 compared to over 50.00 delivered for this exact same ammunition a week ago at my local farm store, I'm guessing the online dealers are seriously gouging. The shelves remain mostly empty, but when they do get ammo in its almost the same price they changed a year ago.

 

Did you buy it at this price? Did anyone you know buy it at this price? If no, who got gouged?
If someone did buy it, they felt it was worth the money; and the way our currency is going, it is probably a great bargain.

 

I fully believe there's a whole lot of profiteering (gouging, call it what you will) going on at the retail level. My local range also sells ammo. In "normal" times, they'd charge $20 a box of 9mm, back when you could stop at Walmart on the way and pick something up for maybe $10 or $11.
The other day I stopped in there, and saw they had plastic ammo boxes loaded with 500 rds of 9mm, for sale for over $700. Off by a back door I could see PMC and Tula boxes broken down. That's over a dollar a rd.
"but what about his cost of purchase and operating", you ask?

Well, go to Federal's site at 5:30 AM this morning, and as a member of the general public, you can get American Eagle for 44 cents a rd. Yes, that's going to only be 100 rds max, and you have to pay 12 buck shipping, which raises it to 56 cents a rd.
Federal isn't selling to the public at cost, and they aren't giving us wholesale prices.

It's human nature to profit, it's part of capitalism. It worked in reverse when there wasn't a big panic rush, someone could afford to undercut somebody else for bigger bulk sales, and those guys all kept the market down. But right now, people are willing to pay through the nose to whoever they can get things from, so there's no pressure or impetus to keep it low. Sgammo could drop it back to $10 a box, and it would sell out in under an hour, and there's such demand that everyone else could stay where they're at and keep selling. The only 'loser' would be sgammo, for minimizing their profits.

WE, the consumers, need to stop this. Wanting a good stash is one thing, buying more and more as the price climbs is another.

 

Went to a dealer about 50 miles away. The shop had 9mm ammo for $32.00 a box of 50. Went to the shop closest to me and mentioned this. Shop owner began looking around and found some. His price was $32.00 a box with a $40/case shipping, which means he paid $34/box. He ordered 50 cases -- only three arrived. He sold them at $38.00 a box. That's 60 boxes at $4.00/box "profit." Not exactly "gouging".