I took my grandson to WalMart today to grab some groceries and to check the ammunition display. They still had 50 round boxes of .22 ammunition, but this time it was 24 boxes of Federal Lightning, at a bit less than 5 cents a round. That is better than we have generally been seeing for the last five years, but still well above historical levels. For whatever reason, this particular WalMart has consistently had .22 ammunition available on the shelf for the past few months.
Five cents a round is below what is showing on the ammoseek.com website, which gives a good indication of what ammunition can be had for online. The lowest that they are showing is .22 Remington at six cents a round. The drift has been generally downward for a few months; but it has been slower than I anticipated.
Maybe there is a pent-up demand for .22 ammunition at lower prices, that will stretch out and flatten the demand curve, keeping production at full capacity while the prices drop.
©2016 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.
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Federal Is very good ammo but it is still over priced. when I had my gun shop. there was a quality test done on the leading brands and federal came out on top in all categories, brass, bullets and primers. Federal had the lowest failure rate of all brands tested in the lab and on the firing range. I did a little price checking of my own. I think Sprague's in Yuma is high until I checked Ace hardware in Blythe. I 6 sets of reloading dies at Sprague's for 42.50 each. Ace is selling them for over 60.00. A manual powder scale for 119.00, I walked out. I paid 27.95 for my manual power scale, retail. Most of my reloading equipment is RCBS because of their life time warranty.
I've pretty much quit looking, maybe the majority don't bother either?
So I was in Ohio the last few days. Guess what? No .22lr at Walmart there, except CCI shot. Rat Shot, Snake Shot, whatever you call it.
Still nothing in South Carolina either.
The WalMarts here in Jacksonville haven't had 22 ammo in years. I always check when in the stores, but it's useless. The sales person claims they sell out as soon as they get it in. I paid almost 15 cents per round for .22 ammo at the gun shop the last time I bought some.
AIB/44
Hopefully (if economics makes sense) the resellers will see the value of their portfolios decreasing and will start to sell before their losses mount, dumping more supply in the markets creation with a price death spiral,
Hopefully.
But then again, the hoarders may take up some of that slack.
It will be interesting to know what the unencumbered market value per round actually is.
I have about 2,500 rounds so I'm not hurting.
I would say 2,500 rounds per gun is ok as long as you can resupply easily. the good thing about 22 is you can easily carry 500 rounds. in a fire fight he who runs out of ammo first looses. I like .22 cal. for its range and accuracy. I save the larger calibers for closer and when greater power is needed. I have numerous ways of carrying extra ammo. right now I'm working on improving my archery equipment and supplies. I'm getting the equipment to make my own arrows for the five bows I have. as I go along I am putting together 7 survival back packs. I still need some high powered rifles. I need three more. I have a fairly complete reloading set up for at least 20 different calibers plus my shotgun equipment. I'm not a hoarder I just believe I never have enough ammo so I cast my bullets and make my own. Scopes save ammo. It never is good to pull the trigger if you don't hit something. Wal-Mart will not be open if we ever need all of our ammo.
Local Gun store advertised a sale on Federal .22LR ammo starting last Friday for $25.00 a brick. When I arrived at the store after work around 4:30 PM I got the last brick they had in stock. Probably be another 3-6 months before I find another one at that price, and it will move just as quickly.
Not sure who all these people are they claim are buying up the .22lr ammo cause it is NOT the people I shoot with on the range every week. I doubt it is "all the new shooters" cause if the seasoned shooters can't find it, I don't know how we could be getting scooped constantly by the "new shooters". The stores say they aren't getting it in regularly even though they are placing orders.
Still a mystery to me where all the 22 is. I refuse to pay ridiculous prices for it to feed the hoarding reselling beast.
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