True Apples vs Apples with real world price checks
Deavis said:
One comparison here was 9mm WWB FMJ and then it is compared to the cost of 9mm with cast lead bullets? No personal offense, but factory made FMJs are a bit more expensive than bullets someone casts themself using wheel weights they got for free. It is also not fair to compare a brand new cased 9mm WWB to a once-fired case you are using.
If that is your metric, compare it to once fired ammo from Ultramax or another manufacturer to be fair. These threads are more rigged than a Don King fight, especially when many people refuse to even put a price on their time, which is the most ridiculous and self-serving way to ensure your ammunition is always cheaper than factory.
I did this exercise in February in another similar thread. I'll repost it here:
OK, if you think his numbers are off then we'll use
my calcs. I stopped going through this mental exercise almost 20 twenty years ago when I started reloading. But we'll go through it again for instructional purposes. Nearly every time I tried to compare factory ammo of similar quality to what I can handload, I find I'd have to pay roughly double buying factory. As you will see, we'll arrive at roughly the same figure.
I shoot 175gr Sierra MatchKings through my .308 in 600 yard F-class matches. I go through roughly 1,000 a year, so we'll figure out how much that costs both factory and handloaded.
You're in luck! I just got my MidwayUSA sale flyer for February. MidwayUSA has them on sale this month.
Federal 308 Win Premium Gold Medal Rifle Ammunition
$220.99 per 200. That's
$130.00 off the regular price.
Now that's a deal! Or is it? We shall see . . .
We'll start with the bullet components. They're on sale too! $134.99 per 500.
Sierra 175gr Sierra MatchKing We'll need two boxes. And just to be nice, I'll even pretend we missed the sale and use the regular price of $144.99 = call it $300 for bullet components (round up for shipping).
I can get my primers and powder at my local gunshop, so I do . . . 1,000 primers cost me roughly $30.00 per thousand. I can get 8lbs of IMR4895 at my local retailer for $140.00, but I don't need 8 lbs. We only need 6 to load up 1k .308s, so that's $100.00 even.
I still have about 2k in .308 brass here, and haven't
needed to buy any in many years. But let's say I did need to buy it. Let's go get 200 pieces of brass, they'll last at least 8 reloads so 200 is plenty to go have 5 afternoons of fun. Whoa . . . Federal is selling brass again. Cool.
They ceased offering it for years once CCI/Blount bought the company - I just learned something. $23.99 per 50, so we'll need 4 boxes = call it an even $100.00.
Federal .308 brass
So, the components cost us $530.00.
That great sale on the exact same Federal factory round with those Sierra bullets is $1,104.95, before shipping. See, roughly half.
But what about my press and equipment you ask? I do own a LOT of reloading equipment and tools. But I've been using the
same Lee press for over 15 years. My scale, powder measure, and dies about the same time frame. That's what we accountants call capital assets, like your car. In fact, I've gone through several cars since I began reloading. My tools are still here.
The equipment it takes to load should be spread out over time, a long period of time, and not justified in a "break-even" analysis. I know guys who are still using their same equipment from 40 years ago. The problem with trying to figure out how many units it takes to pay back capital is tough when you don't know how many units you'll produce on it over it's whole life. And you will see that the components will eventually cost more then the equipment over time.
We'll capitalize the costs and amortize them out over 20 years.
Lee Classic Cast press $99.99, great press.
RCBS's premium scale $151.99
RCBS powder measure $86.99
Lee dies $30.99. Awesome dies, but barely even worth capitalizing.
If I were doing this "for real", none of this stuff would be worth enough for an accountant to bother capitalizing anyway. It's just not material enough. Let's throw in another $200.00 for calipers and other assorted small case prep tools. We're up to $569.96 in equipment, just barely over the cost of the components. And if you are curious, by happenstance we also just broke even, almost to the penny.
Amortized that equipment's going to cost me just under $30/year over 20 years. Merely shooting
nothing but 1,000 rounds of .308 every year costs me $530.00 per year in components (at todays' prices by the way). You can see why over a lifetime of shooting why we say the equipment is such a small cost over the cost of the actual components that it
can practically be ignored. That same factory ammo
on sale was $1,104.95.
Half. It's always half the price to load the same quality yourself. Check my numbers and sources. They're all real-world and documented.
The only question you have to ask yourself is this. Why pay someone else to do work you can do yourself for half the price?
There are no other "true costs". The opportunity cost is "what else were you going to do tonight?" I reload while listening to the nightly news.
