Your description of a good business decision is just that. But I think that's apples and oranges with whats going on now. We have the same groups of people that buy up all retail merchandise, creating the shortage, and then double the price in private sales. That's not exactly what I would call an honest price per market value. Thats a lot more liken to a monopoly, making yourself the only one that has a product, and then fixing the price.It would be scalping if I went to Walmart and bought a brick of Thunderbolts for $22.99 a brick, then got on this forum and offered to sell it to you for $44? Keep that $44 price in mind... because it will come up in my reply again.
If I have the foresight to buy at a low price and sell at a high price, that's just a good business decision.
When I started buying 7.62x51, I was buying Portuguese at $139/1000 rounds. It came in sealed vinyl battlepacks.
When I sold the last sealed 200 round pack of that stuff, I got $98 for it.
Had I not sold at the fair market value, I would have been the one getting taken advantage of. I could have logged on here and told you guys that I'd just sold $100 worth of shiny excellent Portuguese surplus ammo for $30... and you all would have thought I was an idiot. No one would have given me a prize or a cookie for my sacrifice.
FWIW, the guy who bought that ammo from me was very happy with his purchase, especially when we cut the vinyl pack open and found bright, clean ammunition inside.
And I hope he learned his lesson and bought some ammo and was able to ride this panic out.
My brother sold four bulk packs of .22LR to a guy a couple months ago when there was no ammo to be had at all. My brother almost doubled his money on the .22 he sold that guy, but the buyer was ecstatic to get some .22 ammo when he thought there was none available anywhere. He thanked my brother sincerely for the help. He also didn't feel he was being taken advantage of. He felt that my brother did him a favor and he did. The ammo that my brother sold that guy for $25 per 550 round pack was going for $60 online and would cost my brother much more than $25 to replace today. Who's the good guy in that scenario, and who is the bad guy?
In any case, when prices come down, we'll all have choices to make.
Do we build up our own mini-stockpiles of a few months worth of ammo or not? Will you buy a case of .22LR when it's more affordable?
I'm sorry you don't like lines at Walmart.
But people who had a few bricks of .22LR on hand haven't had to stand in line at Walmart to be able to keep some level of shooting proficiency.
Still, you could go in every day at 7 AM and buy your allotment of .22LR, then sell it on the open market for what you paid for it. By doing that, you'd ease some of the pressure on your local .22 market. Maybe if you did that every day for a month you could discourage scalpers and drive the price down.
Or if you'd care to make the drive to the LGS in my area of central PA tomorrow, you could buy a brick of CCI standard velocity for $44 a brick without standing in line. Let me know if you plan to do that. I'll get you the manager's contact info so you can call him and ask him to hold a brick for you. I suspect that it could be sold out soon if you don't do that (in spite of their efforts to keep some in stock).
Let's not forget that the same people who are buying them are paying the same 24$ per 550 that we all were two years ago.
I hope I'm not coming off as someone just bitter because I was beat to the register. I have all I need for shooting for quite some time. I like many of you just bought when the price was right and have a steady revolving inventory. But I don't quite relate that to buying everything in sight.