22LR ammo

[JoJo]

 A new gun shop opened in the next town and I just had to stop in. I haven't seen 22LR ammo for sale anywhere but he had two boxes of CCI left and I bought both. The problem is they were $5.00 a box, thats 10cents a round. What have you paid for 22LR and were they hard to find?

[Nemo]

The last time I bought any was 2-3 weeks before Sandy Hook. Have not found any to purchase since then.  Me and FiL went to a Gander Mountain opening.  They had a half dozen full pallets of the Federal 525 round boxes priced at about $16 or so a box.  Such a good price I bought 20 boxes.  About 15 of them went down when the boat sank a year or so ago, so I only have a few left.

Nemo

[JohnyMac]

Just picked up a box of 300+ rnds for $22-.

I didn't loose them in the flood - Just shot them all up. Every single one. 

[DMCakhunter]

I am on the notify list at a few places and 2 weeks ago Graf n Sons had bricks of remington golden bullet hp's for $39 each with a limit of 3. Other than that I try to hit the local sportsmans warehouse when trucks arrive. Unless you are lucky, it seems like $.10 to $.14 per round is the new normal.

[JohnyMac]

Keep in mind, 22Lr's make a great bargaining currency in SHTF.

[RS762]

10 cents a round is actually a damn good price these days.
As someone who runs a gun shop I can tell you that wholesalers' reps are now perfectly content to call you up when they have 22 ammo and tell you that your dealer price is 7-9 cents a round and that you can only buy 10-20 boxes at a time. And then we end up buying it just to have some on the shelf even though are margins are now minuscule to be at what is now considered a "reasonable" price. Then when it goes on the shelf for 10-12 cents a round I get called a "gouging piece of shit" by dottering old fools who think the price should forever be frozen at 3 cents a round retail for having a 20% markup on the 7-9 cents a round it cost me to get it.

Before you knock mom and pop gun shops for charging too much for 22LR take a minute to think about where THEY have to get it from. There are about 10 big distributors in the country that have a chokehold on the gun industry. They buy up the vast majority of ammo from manufacturers and then sell it to dealers at whatever they feel like charging because they have ALL OF IT. The dealers who cant just give it away, they have to mark it up for profit and then sell it, it's a business not a charity.

[JohnyMac]

RS762, I agree with all of your comments.

[Burt Gummer]

Also factor in the production side. because of the ammo shortage (which we're still riding the tail wind of) the large ammunition manufacturers forwent production of 22lr over other calibers such as .223 likely because the profit margin was higher. And it had to have been, I mean we've all noticed all the small independent manufacturers that sprung up in the wake of the shortage. they saw a demand for product and a profit margin large enough to justify the initial investment in capital goods.
Now that the shortage is slowly dissipating .22lr production is going to start to seem more attractive, competition will come back into that area and prices will drop.

[CJS06]

In most cases rimfire production is totally separate from Centerfire ammunition production. Production of rimfire take place at independent facilities. You cant take centerfire production and convert to rimfire, or reverse. Increasing rimfire production is much more costly than centerfire and once you have spent that and you fill the "backlog" then you have to figure out how to keep all those expensive processes running. That is the double edge sword of manufacturing.  It is easier to shift resources in centerfire production as needed. Make less .40,.380 and increase 9mm for example as they can use the same machinery with smaller less expensive changes being needed. Same with rifle ammo, just reduce the number of lower volume calibers allowing for the increase in 5.56 or .308 for example.

If a company is going to invest capital in new machines they are much more likely to do so for Centerfire as they can be used for multiple calibers reducing the risk of them sitting idle as the wave breaks an starts to recede back to normal. Rimfire machines are dedicated and if they invest heavily then the demand dries up they lose tons......and pricing goes up so they can pay for idle machine when it otherwise would have returned back to normal.

It really isnt a case of applying existing resources, it is really a case of intelligent application of capital with an eye towrd the long term not just a knee jerk.