Price increases getting serious

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Lou629

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Stopped by my local DSG checking ammo prices yesterday. I do this about every other week or so, when their monthly 'sales' flyers are out and also looking for any 'in store' specials. I took note of yet another increase in prices, anywhere from 10-20%, almost overnight. A few examples, for calibers i personally keep track of:

9mm 'sale' price 5.48/bx. 2 weeks ago, and is now 5.98 ( still not too bad only a 10% increase ) but,

.38spl. was 7.98 and is now 9.48!! and this is the 'sale' price now!

.357 is now 19.99 up from 18.00 almost overnight!

Obviously some of it has to do with the price of metals on the markets to the price of gasoline & diesel @ the filling station, and some of it may be the retailers trying to make a little extra money. Whatever the case, better get your practice ammo for this season now guys, i am sure we're all gonna' hate to see what the prices are by this coming fall.
 
Commodity prices have been rising for some time--people are now stealing the copper out of air conditioning units to sell for scrap. It's inevitable that these cost increases get passed along to the consumer.

Hold on...it's going to be a rough road.
 
Gun control? No that won't happen. It does seem like 'ammo control,' and 'price control' IS happening everywhere.:cuss:

Kevin
 
The price of ammo is determined by supply and demand.

To find out why the price of ammo is high, simply determine the components that make up supply and demand, and identify which component(s) have recently changed.
 
My local dealer gave some insight to rising prices when I was complaining to him. Manufacturers are raising prices due to increase in production for military and shipping costs are on the rise due to fuel costs and increased taxes on truckers in certain areas like Illinois. You see in Illinois we like to make truckers pay out the wazzoo.
 
Look at the price of copper and zinc for the past year. Cartridge brass is 70% copper, 30% zinc. Add freight costs on top, and don't be surprised to be this go a lot higher.
 
A buddy of mine is an engineer for one of the national telecoms, and he was telling us about how people were electrocuting themselves on the wrong wires while trying to cut down 100+ foot sections of copper phone line...

...Right off the poles.
 
Look at the price of copper and zinc for the past year. Cartridge brass is 70% copper, 30% zinc. Add freight costs on top, and don't be surprised to be this go a lot higher.
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Haven't looked at Zinc but copper prices are up about 80% over a year ago. Copper prices are expected to fall some but only to a level estimated at about 30% to 50% higher than a year ago.

Add to that that oil prices impact just about every manufacturing process either directly or indirectly and - well - it was inevetible that ammo prices would go up and will probably continue to go up.

Personally - because of the $70/bbl oil - I predict that within the next year or so we're gonna see annual inflation rates of at least 4.5%, probably more like 6% and maybe as high as 8%. Depends on how well the fed can control the money supply and what they consider a reasonable non-damaging inflation rate. The only bright spot is that I believe the Fed learned it's lesson in the late 70's early 80's and won't let us get into a runaway inflation scenario with the resulting really bad recession that would go along with it - at least I hope they did - learn their lesson that is.

SO! not just ammo is gonna keep going up - everything is.
 
And copper and zinc prices caused the price of aluminum cased 9mm Blazer at Academy to go from $3.86/50 to $4.86/50 recently?:confused:
 
Of course the value of copper, zinc, etc. aren't changing much.

But the value of the dollar is sinking fast, due to the Republicans' huge deficit spending. "Cutting taxes" while increasing spending isn't cutting taxes, it's just moving the taxes to those on fixed incomes.

At least now we can tell our wives that we have to buy guns as an inflation hedge. It's the only financially responsible thing to do! (Just nake sure to pick the stuff that will be banned in the near future.... whatever that is. Judging by England, assault crossbows may be next.)
 
Of course the value of copper, zinc, etc. aren't changing much.
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To quote an economics professor I once studied under...

Don't ever believe that value and price are not related for they most certainly are. The only value any real commodity has is what and how much a buyer is willing to pay for it. When it comes to value price is just the market's way of keeping score...

But the value of the dollar is sinking fast,
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Really - and just what are you basing that on? On March 10 of this year 1 dollar only bought 1.18 Euros. Yesterday one dollar would get you 1.26 Euros. Hmmm... doesn't appear to me that the value of the dollar is sinking (at least not relative to the Euro). Here's the Historical Dollar/Euro exchange rate detail going all the way back to Jan 2000 - straight from the Federal Reserve. http://www.federalreserve.gov/RELEASES/h10/Hist/dat00_eu.htm

OTOH the dollar is down a bit againt the Yen, it's up a bit against the Australian dollar. Using the web site and checking the exchange rates against all the major currencies of the world it's pretty easy to tell that the value of the dollar is flat at worst but more likely increasing a bit.

Historically the dollar is a good store of wealth. When inflation hits the world we do a better job of containing it than most so the dollar tends to retain more value and foreign national banks buy them up as a hedge.

So no - the value of the dollar isn't sinking fast - and if inflation takes off like I believe it will it's value will increase at a faster rate than any relative value it will lose due to iinflation.
 
Really - and just what are you basing that on? On March 10 of this year 1 dollar only bought 1.18 Euros. Yesterday one dollar would get you 1.26 Euros. Hmmm... doesn't appear to me that the value of the dollar is sinking (at least not relative to the Euro). Here's the Historical Dollar/Euro exchange rate detail going all the way back to Jan 2000 - straight from the Federal Reserve. http://www.federalreserve.gov/RELEAS...t/dat00_eu.htm
Click to expand...

I think you've read the table backwards, these numbers are the Dollars it takes to buy one Euro, you've intrepreted it the other way around!

Here is a graph that makes it clearer:
http://www.x-rates.com/d/USD/EUR/graph120.html

Or how many Euros it takes to buy one Dollar:
http://www.x-rates.com/d/EUR/USD/graph120.html

--wally.
 
My company installs HVAC systems in large medical, educational and industrial facilities. The water feed and return lines for those systems are usually made of copper.

The price of copper has gotten so high recently that we've had to hire overnight security to keep an eye on our jobsites. People keep sneaking into our projects, cutting down the lines we've installed (800 feet of 4-inch line in one case) and selling the copper to recycling centers.

This has always been a minor problem in our business, but I'd estimate it's tripled or quadrupled in frequency in the last 6 months.
 
I think you've read the table backwards, these numbers are the Dollars it takes to buy one Euro, you've intrepreted it the other way around!
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I wondered about that to be honest so I checked the table for Japan. Look at it - note that the numbers show in the 100's - i.e one dollar buys a 100+ yen which is correct or 100+ yen can be exchanged for a dollar. If we invert that it would show something like .01 or 1 yen gets you a penny or so.

Why would one chart read one way for the Euro and another for the yen?

What are we missing here?

I ask because I really want to know - I am not being sarcastic.
 
Congress should definitely investigate this trend. Greedy ammunition manufacturers must be fixing the markets and commiting price gouging. Why can't they just give back all their profits to lower consumer price points? :fire:

I'm sure supply and demand, and base commodity prices, have nothing to do with the situation.
 
9mm at Wal-Mart went from $4.27 to $6.98 for 115gr. CCI Blazer Brass
Absolutely ridiculous.

Yet 115gr. Winchester is still $4.63 as it's always been. Might be time to stock up on a little bit.
 
Why would one chart read one way for the Euro and another for the yen?
Click to expand...


You'd have to ask the guys that made the charts. That's always a potential problem of doing web searches and taking things out of context -- you may miss out on the conventions commonly used.

Not so long ago it was 200+ Yen to buy a Dollar, now its approaching 100 which confirms the direction the Dollar is going -- worth much less than it was. Good news if you work for a place that actually makes things that can be sold overseas -- business will be picking up as our stuff becomes more competive over there, bad for consumers buying stuff made overseas though -- that's a large part of the reason why Honda, Toyota etc. are making so many cars here -- to avoid the currency fluxuation issues on the cars they sell here.

Right now it takes almost $1.30 to buy 1 Euro! Five or six years ago it was about $0.80 to buy 1 Euro.

--wally.
 
I was going to sell some "excess" ammo I was sitting on. However, think I'll hold onto it now.

Just hate to move the stuff around. Guess I need to spend more time at the range:evil:

I figured ammo would go up and said so about a year ago. If you just look at transpo cost it's obvious. Ammo is wicked heavy and really pretty cheap when you think that a case of 1000rds of AK ammo used to be under $100. I really doubt you could ship something that weight to Russia now for $100.

Best idea I can offer is get the .22's out!
 
All metals, including aluminum and lead are going through the roof. Some of the machne shops I work with are having trouble getting some alloys of steel at any price.

For a long time North America, Japan and Europe, with a combined population of .75 billion were the lonly large scale consumers of some of these materials. Now you have both China and India, with a combined population of over 2 billion industriaizing faster the the Western World ever did, and with more people.

Demands is going through the roof, and will continue to do so for the forseeable future.

Out of curiosity, what is the price of, say, copper doing versus the price of gold?
 
I had been watching the steadily rising price of gold with a lot of interest for about the past 2 years now. I remember the mid & late 70's very well, when it went from next-to-nothing per ounce to a high of $800 or so, before things calmed down some. Two years ago, gold was right around the $300 mark. I had thought to buy some then, but was persuaded not to by a 'brilliant' relative who i have let have undue influence on me. :barf: So what happened? Last month gold was just over $700!!! :banghead: :fire:

The point of all this? If gold can go up and then correct, so will the copper, brass, etc. that goes into the ammo. Eventually the raw components of the ammo. will be cheaper again. However, when one is speaking about retail, what goes up may never come down again, kind of like the retail price of gasoline. The producers & retailers all know they have a captive audience. :cuss:

Stock up on the ammo guys, i don't think this upward price trend is gonna stop anytime soon. It's the same feeling i had about the gold 2 years ago.

PS- about the gold itself: As of the other day, i noticed that it was down nearer to $600, which is a correction i would not have anticipated just yet, but had i bought at $300 i would almost certainly have unloaded it when it first hit 600 while it was on the way up this time out. Don't i wish i had gotten some @ 300!!:banghead:

The Moral of the story? Do what you have to do, not what some idiot family member thinks you should or shouldn't do. :barf:
 
Gold in general is a lousy investment. My mother in law bought $10K worth just before at peaked at about $800 some 20+ years ago -- still can't get what she paid for it. Meanwhile, its earned zero intrest, and inflation has marched on, meaning even if it hits $800 again she's still lost buying power with it.

OTOH $10K to her is chump change, and she bought it in case things got "really bad", to which I said if things get really bad, I'd rather have $10K worth of guns and ammo stashed away!

--wally.
 
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