I have an ammo can with a quantity of 12 gauge 00 buckshot and slugs that I bought a long time ago and never got around to using. The shotgun I had at the time was sold and the ammo got put aside and essentially forgotten about over the years.
The below box of Remington 00 Buck was purchased in 1988 at (of all places) K-Mart, for $3.57. The box of Winchester ammo next to it was bought at the local Wallyworld last week for $5.67.
According to the the Department Of Labor’s online CPI Inflation Calculator, $3.57 in 1988 would be equal to $7.05 today. I guess back then I never gave much thought to ammo prices but it does make you see how the value of the dollar changes over time.
I have twenty round boxes of Winchester/Olin Q3131 (5.56 M193) I purchased in 1999 from Academy Sports that have price stickers that read $2.99 on them, today a box runs $12.99 at Wal-Mart ( the least expensive of retailers).
And, yes I have ammo that old and yes it goes bang if you store it correctly.
There was never a massive demand for shotgun shells.
Back in 1988 I was buying 1,000 rounds of Lake City 5.56 for $100 shipped. Adjusting for inflation that would be about $192.00 today. If you can find me 1,000 round of Lake City 5.56 for $192 shipped you let me know.
I have .32ACP and .30-06 from before WWII that “goes bang” (and actually achieves pretty good accuracy, too). There are a lot of guys who shoot lots of 50+ year old milsurp ammo regularly.
LOL, not at all. I added that for those that can’t believe that someone would have ammo sitting around that long. I have some LC M193 that an uncle gave me, boxes are marked '82. Been holding those back for a raining day, maybe if I every getting around to a “retro-build”.
8 years ago when I first got into shooting. Those yellow Remington umc packs with 250 rounds in it were $35 for .40 S&W. I think 9mm was $30 and .45 was $40.
I remember seeing ad’s in Shotgun News in the 90’s for Russian SKS’s or Russian Makarov’s your choice, $99 and they came with a box of ammo, M-14 kits (that included everything but the receiver, and full auto switch/ parts) $300… I still have a sealed tin of 7.62x54r ammo (440rnds)bought from one of the ad’s in shotgun news, I paid $29 plus shipping, I bought 2, got the can opener as well.
Maybe on surplus U.S. ammo if we ever get out of the middle east,(and that’s a BIG maybe) Surplus firearms? I doubt it… One of the reasons I let my C&R license expire was because there wasn’t much of anything left worthwhile buying, unless you like Mosin-Nagants…By the middle 2000’s most of the C&R stuff left was beat up, tore up, and wore out shit. The nice examples were long gone, and ammo prices skyrocketed. If I’m not mistaken, part of the U.N.'s small arms agreement was that surplus firearms are to be destroyed. About the time you got out of collage, there were a bunch of HK P-7’s that flooded the market, These came from the German state police, and were trade in’s, I got one for $500,(These were NOT C&R, but the price was still, very attractive) since then, I’ve heard(admittedly I’ve no actual proof, so, if I’m wrong, someone please correct me) that Germany will now destroy all surplus small arms rather than sell them, as per signing on to the U.N. agreement. The 90’s were great…In the early 90’s I picked up a couple of Swedish Mausers M-96, M38, (6.5x55 ) Both in excellent plus shape, for $110 for the M96, $120 for the M38… I still have both of them, they are very accurate…
WW2 and the Cold War put a ton of surplus stuff on the market. Its almost all dried up now, and there’s no competition to new ammo. Add in the gun control scares under Obama, and we have ammo prices that are high enough I rarely shoot anymore. I got into AR’s around 2004-2005 and even new brass cased US made ammo back then was well under $200/1000. You could still buy surplus for even quite a bit cheaper than that, and Russian stuff was cheap. I don’t have the disposable income anymore to justify shooting ammo that is as expensive as it is today. Pistol ammo is similarly outrageous.
And yeah shotgun ammo has never had the demand of pistol and rifle.
Yep, my Dad bought 3 Russian SKSs in perfect condition back then at a gun show for $110 each. If I could only warp back into the early 90’s and make a few purchases…
Not gonna happen. Bill Clinton put an end to that. Even if we actually leave, any surplus US ammo is “non importable” back to the US for private sales. All of us that grew up buying Vietnam and WWII surplus ammo, well those days are just gone.
Technically a country like England could legally sell their ammo to the US surplus market, but I don’t think we will see much Radway Green coming our way.
You can thank all the hoarders, government purchases, which are contributors of prices increases, and the Fed for that…especially the Fed for dollar devaluation, thus price inflation since it’s creation. You can make the same argument for anything sold retail over any time frame. You will find the increasing cost of food & fuel outpacing most other items retail.
We’ll all be laughing even less when we think back to this thread 10, 15, 20 years from now about what the prices currently are.
“Why didn’t I buy just a little more!”
While the .gov calculates inflation @ 1.5% because it hinges a lot of its calculations on Chinese laptop computer prices the real inflation is around 9% a year. Over a 5 year period of time it is substantial as that 9% is on top of the previous 9%'s so it is just snowball inflation… Pretty soon 9% inflation will equal hundreds of percents in today’s valuation as 9% of $1 is 9 cents where 9% of $100 is $9. We are just beginning to see that snowball effect.
