I have been monitoring the local WalMart to see if the .22 bubble shows any sign of deflating. A heavy winter visitor presence has returned to Yuma. I have not seen any .22 long rifle in WalMart for months.
This afternoon was different. I stopped at the store, and made my usual inspection of the ammunition counter. There were thousands of .22 LR cartridges for sale, most of them in bulk packs. Bulk packs are the preferred purchase of people who are buying the ammunition for resale, or simply to stock up. All of the .22 ammunition there was Winchester, except for a few CCI shot shells.
There were ten bulk packs of Winchester 333 round count, as pictured above. As I watched, a couple form Washington State purchased five of bulk packs. WalMart still has the 3 box limit; so he bought three and she bought two. They cut their purchase back by 1 box.
I asked them if they had .22 available in Washington State. The answer was that they had it now and then, but this was a better price.
The gentleman said that he had gone to WalMart, early in the morning in Washington State this summer, for two months straight, every day. and he had never scored a round of .22. The last he recalled, he bought the 333 round bulk packs at over $26 a box. The price in Yuma is $17.37, just over 5.2 cents a cartridge.
There were a thousand rounds of .22 Winchester SuperX, but they had not been touched. They were priced at $8.37 a box of 100.
My favorite WalMart clerk, Yittzel, was working today. She said the shipment came in this morning, and included 15 boxes of Federal bulk pack of 525 rounds. The Federal bulk packs sold out first and fast. I wasn't able to get a price on the Federal rounds.
There were also 15 boxes of the Winchester bulk pack that came in this morning. 10 of those were left at 3:30 this afternoon, down to 5 boxes by 4 p.m.
The thousand rounds of Winchester SuperX were already there this morning, and were still there when I left the store this afternoon.
In the last week, I have seen .22 long rifle as low as 5 cents a round on the Internet. There is market resistance to breaking the 5 cents a round barrier, but it is coming. Demand is starting to be met.
The prediction that we will see bulk pack .22 long rifle ammunition at 4 cents a round by the end of October, still holds.
©2017 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.
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3 comments:
Haven't checked Walmart lately, but our local Cabela's has had .22LR for a few months now. Winchester 36gr HP about $10 for a hundred rounds, Federal bulk 333 round boxes for just under $20. Hey - at least it's available again. :p
I am sure the retailers are price gouging. It cant possibly cost that much to produce .22LRs. 100 % markup is Ok but there used to be a law called usury that forbid selling anything retail for more than 300% markup. I think these 10 cent per round prices are clearly violations of the usury laws. Usury was actually passed to prevent banks and lending institutions from ripping people off when they borrowed money but was later applied to retail markup. When it is applied to retail markup that is how you prove price gouging. Rockefeller made his fortune selling Gas. Retailers were making profit at 15 cents per gallon. Production and refining are now a science, there are now many refineries around the country so processing gasoline should be getting cheaper not increased by 30-40 or 50 times the cost of production for the markup at retail prices. I have enough .22LR to last me for a very long time I am not going to buy any more until the price drops down considerably. I used to sell it for 78 cents a box of 50. it was the best price around for 200 miles but I had a lot of happy customers.
Very nice post. Buy cheap bulk ammo at bite the bullet, find the quality best pistol & rifle ammunition, gun magazines & accessories at discounted price.
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