Rick Courtright
Hawkeye
Hi,
Don't want to hijack any other threads on this subject, and certainly don't want to take any wind out of the sails of the conspiracy theorists. Just some observations...
The fellow I get most of my reloading supplies from has a small shop in an industrial park where nobody would even recognize from appearance or name of business what he sells. How low key is he? He's been in business 16 years, and I only found out about him two years ago when my previous supplier passed away, and his daughter and brother decided it was time to put their business to rest after 50+ years. She sent me to the "new guy."
Now my new fellow keeps as close to a "live" inventory on his website as practical, updating daily and sometimes more frequently, his powder, primer and bullet inventories by actual count and shot by "these sizes in stock" status. He's had no full powder shipments in 5-6 weeks, and it's been well over 2 months since a "full" order came in. He finally got one Wed. morning last week (he's open Wed-Sat.)
I hadn't checked the website for a couple of days, and Thursday night I checked to see what he had. Wow! A full powder order was in. I figured I'd go visit Saturday morning. When I left the house, he had 90 lbs of one powder I wanted, and 13 lbs of another. It takes an hour to get to his shop, and I arrived before noon. I expected he'd be out of the one, but I could fill in with the other. No such luck.
Guess what? His ENTIRE load was sold by the time I got there. I asked him how much came in. 1000 lbs! Gone in three days! And at $25-$29/lb for most, depending on the size jug. About a dollar a pound over pre-pandemic pricing. Certainly no gouging!
I wonder what kind of an uproar there will be whenever primers reappear?
Just a side note on Remington ammo: he handles a lot of Remington shotshells, mostly target loads. His ammo racks have been empty for a while, too, but the distributor told him he'd be seeing some Gun Clubs (Rem's promo tgt loads) "one of these days." I pallet.
For reference, I was in Yuma, AZ for the dove season opener Sept 1. They've got a huge gun store--Spragues--which managed to acquire a good inventory of dove loads for the opener. They were letting people buy one flat (10 boxes--250 rds) at $8.99/box (about $2 more than last year. That was quite reasonable all things considered (my shooting buddy had paid $15/box for the two boxes he could find on the way to where we met!), and there were long lines behind three cash registers. The guy with the pallet jack had brought in two pallets in maybe 15-20 minutes of my browsing (checking out at the register was the bottleneck there!)
Supply and demand? It's real.
Rick C
Don't want to hijack any other threads on this subject, and certainly don't want to take any wind out of the sails of the conspiracy theorists. Just some observations...
The fellow I get most of my reloading supplies from has a small shop in an industrial park where nobody would even recognize from appearance or name of business what he sells. How low key is he? He's been in business 16 years, and I only found out about him two years ago when my previous supplier passed away, and his daughter and brother decided it was time to put their business to rest after 50+ years. She sent me to the "new guy."
Now my new fellow keeps as close to a "live" inventory on his website as practical, updating daily and sometimes more frequently, his powder, primer and bullet inventories by actual count and shot by "these sizes in stock" status. He's had no full powder shipments in 5-6 weeks, and it's been well over 2 months since a "full" order came in. He finally got one Wed. morning last week (he's open Wed-Sat.)
I hadn't checked the website for a couple of days, and Thursday night I checked to see what he had. Wow! A full powder order was in. I figured I'd go visit Saturday morning. When I left the house, he had 90 lbs of one powder I wanted, and 13 lbs of another. It takes an hour to get to his shop, and I arrived before noon. I expected he'd be out of the one, but I could fill in with the other. No such luck.
Guess what? His ENTIRE load was sold by the time I got there. I asked him how much came in. 1000 lbs! Gone in three days! And at $25-$29/lb for most, depending on the size jug. About a dollar a pound over pre-pandemic pricing. Certainly no gouging!
I wonder what kind of an uproar there will be whenever primers reappear?
Just a side note on Remington ammo: he handles a lot of Remington shotshells, mostly target loads. His ammo racks have been empty for a while, too, but the distributor told him he'd be seeing some Gun Clubs (Rem's promo tgt loads) "one of these days." I pallet.
For reference, I was in Yuma, AZ for the dove season opener Sept 1. They've got a huge gun store--Spragues--which managed to acquire a good inventory of dove loads for the opener. They were letting people buy one flat (10 boxes--250 rds) at $8.99/box (about $2 more than last year. That was quite reasonable all things considered (my shooting buddy had paid $15/box for the two boxes he could find on the way to where we met!), and there were long lines behind three cash registers. The guy with the pallet jack had brought in two pallets in maybe 15-20 minutes of my browsing (checking out at the register was the bottleneck there!)
Supply and demand? It's real.
Rick C