9mm Single Box & Bulk Ammo Prices

[DG23]

<1¢ Powder (≈5gr of Unique)
2.4¢ Primer (CCI, bought last year at the local Sportsman's Whorehouse).

Has been many years since I saw primers under 3 cents per.

And that is buying online and in bulk. No way they can be bought for less locally for me and especially not any any SW around here.

[Bimmer]

Has been many years since I saw primers under 3 cents per.

And that is buying online and in bulk. No way they can be bought for less locally for me and especially not any any SW around here.

It had been years and years since I had seen primers that cheap! Several times a year I pop into the local SW or other big box gun shops (Cabela's, Bass Pro, whatever) when I'm traveling. Often I find nothing. Every once in a while, I get lucky... (They later had Nosler .308 168gr CCs on sale.)


NB: When I found those primers at SW I already had 50,000+, since I had stocked up after the 2008 panic... I had gone into 2008 with plenty of primers (10,000?), but seeing supplies dry up and/or skyrocket in price convinced me to buy it cheap and stack it deep once I had the chance.


I think it's a corollary of Murphy's Law that if you're desperately looking for something, you won't find it...

[jaholder]

Simply put, if you can't find better prices than those, then it doesn't make sense to buy much of anything gun/ammo related right now.

My 2¢: You're doing it wrong.

I've never paid $40/lbs for powder or anywhere near $65/1,000 for primers — Buy in bulk, when components are cheap and/or on sale.

I don't know any serious reloader who buys powder by the single pound (except for oddball experiments) or only 1,000 primers (or only 1,000 bullets, for that matter). I buy 4lbs or 8lbs jugs of powder, and at least 10,000 primers at a time. I don't pay for brass.


I ran my math again, and my cost for .40S&W is more like 10 or 11¢ per round.

7.2¢ Bullet (155gr SWC, bought earlier this year direct from Summers)
<1¢ Powder (≈5gr of Unique)
2.4¢ Primer (CCI, bought last year at the local Sportsman's Whorehouse).

I'm not talking about prices last year, I'm talking about now. The landscape today isn't buy in bulk, it's get what you can where you can. Not everyone is a volume reloader and bloviating about how you bought components cheap and stacked deep X years ago helps no one who's recently gotten into reloading their own ammo. Until recently I only loaded for my rifles and while I kept a few K in pistol components Just In Case I was time, money and effort ahead buying factory.

You're not going to find cases of primers anywhere, period. Powder in bulk is hit and miss, more miss, at best. The only bulk powder I've been able to find in the past year is Win 244, which I'd never used before but picked up because my stash of 231 is about depleted. Bullets have never been difficult to locate because without powder or primers they sit on a shelf.

There's still the topic of the time and effort that goes into reloading. I don't own a progressive, I have multiple single stages I use for building rifle ammo, mostly for accuracy loads. It takes a metric buttload of time to retool, process and reload bulk ammo on single stage equipment. That's time I could be doing something else. That too has to be factored in.

[Ron3]

I started reloading in early 2020. Just a Lee turret press.

Just buying things when I found them, sometimes paying inflated prices or brands I didn't prefer, but I got it going.

I mostly reload for ammo that was expensive to buy in the best of times. .32 Long, .32 Magnum, .44 Russian, .25 acp.

With the revolver cartridges I use lead bullets and cases last a long time.

Primers were tough but i managed.

I can reload the above for between $10 and $15 a box of 50. I overpaid on the large pistol primers, but the .44 caliber hasnt been less than $25/50 in many, many years. Same for the .32 mag.

But I've got them now and started loading .45 acp for $15/50.

Basically, i started in 2020 and now save about $10-$30 a box depending. And I enjoy it, actually.

If you shoot something different, rifle or pistol, go for it.

[Bimmer]

I'm not talking about prices last year, I'm talking about now.

Simply put, if you can't find better prices than those, then it doesn't make sense to buy much of anything gun/ammo related right now.

There was your answer... Things will go back to normal. Just work on your shopping list, for now.

[Pappabear]

Price for 1000 9mm components, current best prices:

1000 Berry's 115FMJ $110
1000 CCI500 primers $65
1 pound HS6 (7 grains/rd) $40
once fired range brass ( if you don't have it on hand) $60

You're $275 into components alone. Best price I can find for 1000 rounds of loaded factory 9mm is $398 online. That leaves a cost difference of $127, not taking shipping into account. Let's assume you can pick that up at your LGS. The question is if your time to clean process and load 1000 rounds of ammo is worth $127.00 ?

Shipping and taxes fcks that number all up. I put some ammo in a cart or two and walked after seeing tax and shipping. Ended up being over .50 a round. I'll buy when I can get it at my door for .35/rd.

And I've been shooting like I always have whether it be H-ELD 6.5CM, 308 or 9mm. If I get down to sub 2k rounds of 9mm, I'll slow down. Maybe start shooting some .22LR, I have 9 trillion rounds.

I keep bugging Mark to use some of our Wolf small magnum rifle primers and try for pistol which he assures me will work with some of our handguns and subguns, but he breaks into cold sweats at the very conversation of using those primers for handguns vs 556. Hell we only have about 40K of the SMRP.

PB

[markm]

I keep bugging Mark to use some of our Wolf small magnum rifle primers and try for pistol which he assures me will work with some of our handguns and subguns, but he breaks into cold sweats at the very conversation of using those primers for handguns vs 556. Hell we only have about 40K of the SMRP.

We only have 25k Wolf primers. That's DANGER low.

[Pappabear]

Allegedly 25k.

[gaijin]

Yeah, I have a problem with HazMat charge on ONE or TWO K primers. Different when you could get 5K or 10K with a single HazMat charge.
Now with TAX, Shipping/Handling and Hazmat, $100 per 1K primers is prohibitive.

Shooting, particularly handgun, is a perishable skill though. It takes what it takes to get in the range time.

[markm]

Shooting, particularly handgun, is a perishable skill though. It takes what it takes to get in the range time.

So my annual qual on my carry pistol isn't enough??