I'm doing a lot of "silencer ammo" which the manufacturers charge a premium for, usually around $1 per shot.
Or super hot 9 like buffalo bore and they charge like $1.70 for cast lead and up to $2.50 per shot for jacketed.
I had to look up buffalo bore prices on midway since it's been since like 2016 since I bought BB ammo.
Yeah there's a magtech sale right now, 30 cents a shot, not counting shipping or taxes.
This the big thing for me as well. Im either shooting 147s at 980fps or 124s at 1200fps. General run of the mill loadings from wherever are not what Im looking for and are not inexpensive when you want certain things. The thing is? Even the loads I want and I load are still cheaper than cheap ball ammo.
You can buy once fired 9mm brass for 2-4 cents a pop all day long depending on how much you want. And if you shoot at the right range, you can get all you can pickup for free. Thats how I built my stash of 20000+ 9mm cases, picking them up one at a time for about 5 years. Thankfully I had young kids that liked shooting. The real killer is primer prices right now. 10 cents a pop used to be what I was loading an entire round for 4-5 years ago. Bullets have gone up, but RMR and HiTek coated bullets are still decently cheap and accurate.
Time? Time is what you value it at. I can tell you right now Im not loading pistol ammo on a single stage, guys do it, I simply cannot. I would estimate that just my 9mm reloading alone has paid for my LnL AP (with case and bullet feeder) and Lee APP twice over. We wont even talk about 1000s of rounds of 300 BO subs, MK 262 MOD-1 clones, or M80 ball clones I load every year in that equipment payoff estimation. Im not fully automated, so I still pull the handle for every round, but Im loading at 600 rounds an hour pretty easily on the LnL, and decapping at 1500 or more rounds an hour on the APP. Lets say I value my time at $30 an hour which works out at about 5 cents a round when loading, and 2 cents when decapping, Im only "spending" 7 cents a round on each loaded round.
The math works out like this if you include once fired brass and time at $30 an hour:
7 cents for labor
3 cents for case
8 cents for bullet
10 cents for primer
4 cents for powder
32 cents a round for either a 147 sub or a fast 124 that you might be able to buy for double that price if youre lucky. I am probably seeing savings of a minimum of 20 cents a round and 70 on the top end as Im looking at +P 124s, or subsonic 147s.
The point here is that if you want to save money on 9mm? You cant do it on a single stage if you are going to start factoring in time as a value in the cost equation. You probably need to be able to load at least 300, maybe 400 an hour to make it pay. If you start loading 9mm at 600+, you will definitely pay off the equipment needed based on how much you shoot per year.
www.midwayusa.com
