Vintage Ammo from the Gun Show

[Chevelle SS]

Thought I would show a couple vintage boxes of ammo I picked up at the gun show that I thought were neat. I believe the Western Super X are from the early 1960s and are a complete box. The Remington box is missing one round but inside was the sales receipt from 1968 for $5.36. Anyway, I think these are pretty cool.

 

[hps1]

Vintage Ammo​

Vintage??? Can't estimate the number of boxes just like those that I have emptied. You really know how to hurt a fellow.
Now ammo for these is vintage...........

 

[Show Me]

Thought I would show a couple vintage boxes of ammo I picked up at the gun show that I thought were neat. I believe the Western Super X are from the early 1960s and are a complete box. The Remington box is missing one round but inside was the sales receipt from 1968 for $5.36. Anyway, I think these are pretty cool.

View attachment 1214844View attachment 1214845View attachment 1214846

1968 I was making 1.50 per hour. That box would have been a half days work. And people cry about ammo that cost 1/2 to 3/4 hour pay. Just my impression.

 

[NIGHTLORD40K]

Very cool, but no way I would shoot that Ought-Six. Commercial ammo doesn't have the same amount of nitrocellulose stabilizer as military surplus. Degraded powder can have unpredictable burn rates, pressure spikes, hangfires, and squibs. Remington has always said not to shoot their ammo if over 10 years old.

The 20GA. is less risky, but I would still inspect the bore after every shot.

 

[22250Rem]

Very cool. Thanks for posting those pics. It's amazing that box of .30-06 still had the receipt in the box, and I see that Nichols Sports & Marine also carried Johnson Outboard Motors. Back in the 1950's & 60's my grandfather was one of their loyal customers.

 

[45/30-06OKIE]

Thought I would show a couple vintage boxes of ammo I picked up at the gun show that I thought were neat. I believe the Western Super X are from the early 1960s and are a complete box. The Remington box is missing one round but inside was the sales receipt from 1968 for $5.36. Anyway, I think these are pretty cool.

View attachment 1214844View attachment 1214845View attachment 1214846

Wow they literally just wrote Box 30-06 with no brand and grain weight? Huh I bet they didnt care about inventory back then lol. Interesting... but $5.36 for 20rds is 30-06 was probably a lot back then even though today that would be a steal.

 

[Jim Watson]

1968 I was making 1.50 per hour. That box would have been a half days work. And people cry about ammo that cost 1/2 to 3/4 hour pay. Just my impression.

Too true. People salivate over the prices in old advertising without thinking what the pay was at the time.

 

[tmd16556]

I have the same 20 gauge box. It’s just covered in 1980s vintage packing tape since it was used for reloads and that was my grandfather’s storage solution. I have a few stray hulls that have survived a decent number of reloads.

 

[HowardC]

Once, in the days of old, ca 1958, my older brother took me deer hunting over around Burns, Co. He shot a nice 4 pt muley and we put it in the trunk of his Chevy coupe. Coming home through the town of Dillon (before the dam was built), he traded a box of 30-30 ammo for a tank of gas at the late open gas station. I'm guessing was about $3.50 or so. Course, I could take a girl out on $5 then, too.
-West out.

 

[Odd Job]

Cool that it has the receipt also, survived after all these years!

 

[Dave DeLaurant]

Cool finds! I'll bet you didn't pay $5.36 for that box!


About ammo prices:

I watch a lot of C&rsenal programs that include unit pricing on early military contracts. In the 1899 contract with Italy for 5K C96 Mauser pistols, these handguns, complete with shoulder stocks and cleaning rods cost 67.50 Reichmarks each. The same contract included 1.5M rounds ammo priced at 61 Reichmarks per 1K. Using those numbers, this expensive stocked pistol sold for roughly the same price as 1100 rounds of military-grade ammo. That seems like fairly pricy ammo to me, probably higher than today's pricing.

With white box 9x19 retailing for something like .30/round at Cabela's right now, 1100 rounds works out to $332 in contemporary money. Bulk military contract pricing would be even lower.

 

[Speedo66]

Cool finds! I'll bet you didn't pay $5.36 for that box!


About ammo prices:

I watch a lot of C&rsenal programs that include unit pricing on early military contracts. In the 1899 contract with Italy for 5K C96 Mauser pistols, these handguns, complete with shoulder stocks and cleaning rods cost 67.50 Reichmarks each. The same contract included 1.5M rounds ammo priced at 61 Reichmarks per 1K. Using those numbers, this expensive stocked pistol sold for roughly the same price as 1100 rounds of military-grade ammo. That seems like fairly pricy ammo to me, probably higher than today's pricing.

With white box 9x19 retailing for something like .30/round at Cabela's right now, 1100 rounds works out to $332 in contemporary money. Bulk military contract pricing would be even lower.

The closest I could find re: an inflation calculator for German Marks to dollars was 1913. At that time it was 4.2 Marks per US dollar, or $16 per gun.

Next, calculating via US Bur. of Labor Statistics, 1913 dollars to current dollars, the figure now would be about $504 per gun.

 

[Chevelle SS]

Cool finds! I'll bet you didn't pay $5.36 for that box!


About ammo prices:

I watch a lot of C&rsenal programs that include unit pricing on early military contracts. In the 1899 contract with Italy for 5K C96 Mauser pistols, these handguns, complete with shoulder stocks and cleaning rods cost 67.50 Reichmarks each. The same contract included 1.5M rounds ammo priced at 61 Reichmarks per 1K. Using those numbers, this expensive stocked pistol sold for roughly the same price as 1100 rounds of military-grade ammo. That seems like fairly pricy ammo to me, probably higher than today's pricing.

With white box 9x19 retailing for something like .30/round at Cabela's right now, 1100 rounds works out to $332 in contemporary money. Bulk military contract pricing would be even lower.

I gave $15 for the 30.06 and $6 for the 20ga.

 

[Chevelle SS]

Vintage??? Can't estimate the number of boxes just like those that I have emptied. You really know how to hurt a fellow.
Now ammo for these is vintage...........
View attachment 1214847View attachment 1214848

You win, vintage to me . I’ll have to post my oldest box some time. I believe it is from 1900ish.

 

[Chevelle SS]

Wow they literally just wrote Box 30-06 with no brand and grain weight? Huh I bet they didnt care about inventory back then lol. Interesting... but $5.36 for 20rds is 30-06 was probably a lot back then even though today that would be a steal.

Cool that it has the receipt also, survived after all these years!

One other neat thing I didn’t notice right away is November 15 is our opening day for rifle dear season, so the box was purchased on opening day 1968.

 

[22250Rem]

So that box of .30-06 was purchased on opening day 1968, and there's one round missing.......... Makes me wonder about that one round.

 

[hps1]

The Remington box is missing one round but inside was the sales receipt from 1968 for $5.36. Anyway, I think these are pretty cool.

One other neat thing I didn’t notice right away is November 15 is our opening day for rifle dear season, so the box was purchased on opening day 1968.

Cool!

Buy a box of ammo on opening day of deer season, shoot one round, put receipt in box....heck, he coulda taken the remainder of the box back to the store to get a refund on unused portion if he'd put the empty case back in the box.

 

[lightman]

Cool pictures from another time.

 

[hps1]

Cool!

Buy a box of ammo on opening day of deer season, shoot one round, put receipt in box....heck, he coulda taken the remainder of the box back to the store to get a refund on unused portion if he'd put the empty case back in the box.

You win, vintage to me . I’ll have to post my oldest box some time. I believe it is from 1900ish.

Things have sure changed since you and I grew up. When I was in high school I used to buy ammo at an old grocery store that sold guns and ammo. They would sell you shells, one round or more up to a box.
In fact, I bought a box of the first Remington plastic shotgun shells there. I had two misfires and threw the rounds away, got home and found that Remington was offering a full box of shells to anyone who had any problems with this "brand new" technology. I don't remember what I paid for the box of shells but I was only making $.45/hour at a part time job and I went back to the pond (gasoline was $.19/gallon) to recover my ticket for two free boxes of shells ! Only found one shell but with grand visions of a whole season's ammo supply, I rushed back and sent the shell back to Remington.

Remington replied that their inspection revealed that the shell was not a live round, but a dummy shell from one of their store displays, and I did not have a misfire. They said there was a hole in the primer to indicate the shell was a dummy. I suspect that they forgot to drill that hole, as there was only a dent in the one I sent them, but needless to say, I didn't get my box of free shells.

Since the store sold ammo by the cartridge, I don't doubt Remington's claim; the store did not have any Remington displays.

 

[hps1]

You win, vintage to me . I’ll have to post my oldest box some time. I believe it is from 1900ish.

Speaking of old, I've been reloading over 70 years and bought this can of Bullseye powder for $3.75 and that was before sales taxes were invented IIRC. Don't have many old ammo boxes, as I've reloaded 99% of the ammo I shot, and only bought a few boxes of factory for the brass. Never loaded for shotgun.The unopened full box of 16ga shotgun shells have a price tag of $4.75 and the .357 boxes (sorry, MT brass only) were $10.95 in case price tags are illegible.

 

[mac66]

I went through my dad's stuff when he passed and found some of these boxes of ammo and a coffee tin full of loose rounds. Some are from the 40s & 50s

Thought they were cool so I set them up and photographed them.




Some of the shotgun shells he had



BTW, plastic shot shells came out in the early 1960s

 

[Dave DeLaurant]

The closest I could find re: an inflation calculator for German Marks to dollars was 1913. At that time it was 4.2 Marks per US dollar, or $16 per gun.

Next, calculating via US Bur. of Labor Statistics, 1913 dollars to current dollars, the figure now would be about $504 per gun.

I've used those those calculators before. They incorporate average pricing for a range of different domestic commodities and usually give a good relative picture, but they can be way off on cost of specific manufactured products, particularly imported ones.

For example, here is advertisement from 1899 showing the retail price of a C96 in US dollars. Much of the price difference from the calculator estimate would have been import tariffs.


1899 was an easier time to calculate relative exchange rates between national currencies due to specie-backing. I just did a quick calculation of my own the difference between RM and USD in 1899, based on the pure gold content of coinage. It was almost exactly 4.1 RM/1 USD at that time. Once you enter the era of fiat currency, determining both exchange rates and relative pricing becomes more complicated.

BTW, the 1930 US retail price of a C96 (from the Stoeger catalog) was exactly double the 1899 price. This was right after the stock market crash of 1929, but before the gold standard was abolished in 1932.

 

[buck460XVR]

1968 I was making 1.50 per hour. That box would have been a half days work. And people cry about ammo that cost 1/2 to 3/4 hour pay. Just my impression.

Using inflation calculators, that box of ought-six would cost about 48 and a half bucks today. Still not a bargain, but still hard to beat a 180gr "Core-Lokt" out of a '06 for deer.

 

[KnightHawk]

Well this thread got me curious so of course I had to go look. Forgot I had these, most full, some partial.



These Bronze points were the inspiration for John Noslers Partition bullets.

Used to use these Barnes semi pointed 400 and 300 grain 458 bullets with .32 jackets in and old High Wall 45-70. They offered .32 and .49 jackets for tough stuff.
These were later called Barnes Originals.

 

[mac66]