Lucky Gunner Ammo

57springer said:

I guess I remember hearing that about them at the start of the pandemic. And people remember getting bent over .

Click to expand...

Gouging their customers is a corporate policy that goes way back - during one of the panics when Obama was prez, I remember "Cheaper Than Dirt" charging $100 EACH for Colt-marked AR15 mags! As you say, folks remember that kind of thing.

the_leper_colony said:

Gouging their customers is a corporate policy that goes way back - during one of the panics when Obama was prez, I remember "Cheaper Than Dirt" charging $100 EACH for Colt-marked AR15 mags! As you say, folks remember that kind of thing.

Click to expand...

I don't remember ever buying from them, but good to know .

57springer said:

I don't remember ever buying from them, but good to know .

Click to expand...

I used to order products from them until they became Lower Than Dirt.

Have used them several times with no issues.

dobegrant.45 said:

Have used them several times with no issues.

Click to expand...

The question that these people are raising is not in having an issue, as with the order proecess or getting what they ordered. It is all about them taking advantage of global situations and raisng their prices considerably - definite gauging. As I said above, I have a very in depth ballistics file that covers 35 handgun and 25 rifle calibers. And ever since the COVID pandemic, most ammo retailers rasised thei pruces, but Cheaperthandirt raised their prices 2-4 times the amount before COVID fairly soon after the crisis hit us. They have only come down a little recently. But as you can see in the case of the .327 Mag ammo that I detailed above, their price was double that of Selway Armory', and that is today's price. That is clearly gauging!

57springer said:

Thank you , for yet another source !

Click to expand...

Great, but keep in mind that this is what my ballistics file is for - to find the lowest cost ammo per caliber.

Honestly, if you don't find someones prices acceptable you simply should not buy from them. Do without, or buy elsewhere if possible. During some of the panics I noticed that some retailers were paying far over normal retail prices for their goods and simply adding their normal markup. A friend has a gun shop & 'smithing facility and lets me buy direct from some of his vendors and yes, prices were out of line compared to previous catalogs. If I wasn't willing to pay those prices I simply didn't buy.

At least four of my friends primary vendors were terribly high, but all were pretty consistent in their wholesale pricing for the most part.

Surf and save. Only a fool would pay $50.00 for a box of quality factory ammo when a little time and keyboard activity would lead them to where it's $20.00 a box.

anachronism said:

Honestly, if you don't find someones prices acceptable you simply should not buy from them. Do without, or buy elsewhere if possible. During some of the panics I noticed that some retailers were paying far over normal retail prices for their goods and simply adding their normal markup. A friend has a gun shop & 'smithing facility and lets me buy direct from some of his vendors and yes, prices were out of line compared to previous catalogs. If I wasn't willing to pay those prices I simply didn't buy.

At least four of my friends primary vendors were terribly high, but all were pretty consistent in their wholesale pricing for the most part.

Click to expand...

So what is a retailer supposed to do? Sell it for what they paid for it, or just not carry it at all?
They are in business to make money. When wholesale prices go up, retail prices go up.

peachhead said:

So what is a retailer supposed to do? Sell it for what they paid for it, or just not carry it at all?
They are in business to make money. When wholesale prices go up, retail prices go up.

Click to expand...

I think that the jest of what Anarch was saying it that the retailers have been gouging the customers, and not just due to raised manufacturer prices. Oner of the worst retailers in this regards is Cheaperthandirt, who raised their pries 3-4 times they were before COVID, and by-and-large are still quite high in most cases. This is quite clear now that some of the other retailers have actually lowered their prices, and have come down 'close; to pre COVID, but Cheaperthandirt has not.


And doing a quick online search does not always give you the lowest prices. It may give you ammo that is available, but normally the search results will be limited in scope. That is partly why I created my ballistics file - to be able to scan many retailers for any specific caliber, and find the lowest cost, or the most powerful, or if looking for a certain type of bullet. I also created this file to debunk a lot of BS out there about the various calibers, and usually this is about handgun calibers. Many online ammo and gun reviews give out misleading and actually wrong info on ammo, usually because they are biased in some direction - usually pistol ammo vs revolver ammo, although there is a lot about the .45ACP (a pistol ammo) vs. 9mm, or 10mm, or 40mm. And sometimes it is revolver ammo (usually .357 Mag) vs. many of the popular pistol ammo (again - 9mm, 10mm, 40mm).


So, I have built a very extensive ammo file, which covers 35 handgun calibers and 25 rifle ones, where each entry is a link to a website that sells that ammo. In my file I list such things as the box price, the price per round, the bullet type, its availability, and it ballistics, and a bit more. This file has over 3,500 entries (I have been building it for over 10 years), where each entry is a link to an online website that sells that ammo. So, after collecting enough entries per caliber, I can that calculate such things as average price per round, and average ballistics. and also get a range of ballistics, all within each caliber. This means, at a glance, you can tell the minimum power and the max power for any caliber. To make all these calculations, including the ammo's power, the original file is in MS Excel, but I release it in PDF format, so it is safe to all and all can read it. The basic ballistics info comes from the retailer's webpages.


If anyone is interested in getting this file, just message me here, and I will either send the file to you via email, or tell you how to get it online ,if you so prefer. I have already proved the merits of this file here with the person who was looking for low cost .327 Mag ammo, and I showed him a site that sold the same ammo for 20% less. than what he just bought

Oh, we were definitely getting gouged during the pandemic. I was working for a national LTL carrier on the dock, and had a trailer to unload. I opened the door and the first pallet on the tail was a wreck. A pallet of Federal handgun ammo. No broken cases so, no loose boxes or rounds. No problem, restack and reshrinkwrap. Then I found a manila envelope with the manifest. Imagine my surprise to see that the consignee of this ammo was only paying $219/cs ($10.95/50 rd) for 9mm while shelves were empty and prices were at unbelievable prices. I firmly believe that the gouging came most at the final point of sale.

Retailers don't actually sell product - they're in the real estate business. They treat their shelves (and warehouses) as real estate. They gotta put SOMETHING on that shelf in order to pay the rent/employees. If one product isn't providing that profit, they jack up the prices on product that ARE selling to compensate.

Walmart taught me that lesson decades ago - they actually charged a slotting fee (an "up front" fee paid based upon each square foot of shelf space) in exchange for giving us shelf space on which to place our products - baseball trading cards. When I challenged the Walmart buyers, they said, "Our stores are expected to produce $X of profit per square foot of shelf space. If your product can't produce that profit, we'll give your shelf space to some other product. A slotting fee simply reduces the product-specific profit we need." That was Walmart's logic. Most retailers follow similar logic. Hard to argue with them - particularly when their push back was, "That's OK...we're not offended. We'll just merchandise some other products instead of yours."

High profit-per-foot on one category of items (ammo) was used to justify lower-than-needed profit on other product categories. This was particularly true when many grocery items and household goods (e.g. toilet paper, etc.) were out of stock because the manufacturers of those items couldn't keep up with the "run" on those items caused by CCP-virus-induced consumer panic buying. Ammo - a relatively "inelastic" product category (i.e., sales volume wasn't overly sensitive to product prices) was targeted by the mass merchandisers as a prime candidate for such "price gouging."

I've actually found that buying directly from the smaller ammo manufacturer/retailers (True Shot, Freedom Munitions, et al) is the best day-in-day-out source of low-cost ammo. Plus, they frequently waive shipping costs in exchange for "at least $X of product sales."

Some of you need to spend a year or two as a retailer. Especially in such a time as the last three years.
In between the big box stores getting discounts by purchasing thousands of pallets at a time and the wholesaler limiting everyone else by saying "you must buy this (that you don't want) in quantity to get this (that you do want) in single, I don't believe a good many of you would make it.
It's no longer the good old days. EVERYTHING costs more. So you think we as retailers are just going to arbitrarily jack up our prices because we are so greedy? No, we raise prices because OUR costs went up.

I don't envy anyone in the retail business. In the past, retailers and other middlemen served a real purpose in connecting customers with minimal information to producers' or wholesalers' products. However, the internet now provides the connection directly and the result is much slimmer margins for retailers and perhaps not a good long term economic outlook for this sector of the economy.

That said, I am generally frustrated by middlemen, and doubly so by those that offer what I feel is inadequate expertise, so I would not miss most gun shops I have visited in the past.

Last month I purchased a gun from budds for $615. (overpriced yes, but I have been looking for this gun for 2 1/2 years, so I thought I had to pay that price). The next day budds had the price of $489 in their website. I emailed them and asked them to honor that new price, but they would not stating a few flimsy excuses, namely they had to pay more for them so I had to pay more too. Three days later they upped the price to $515. Then a day or so later they increased the price to $615. The next excuse they said was that they cannot change the price as the price they paid determined the price I had to pay. I stated they have the ability to charge any price they want, but that fell on deaf ears. So the largest gun store can gouge any customer without any recourse. The retailer can gouge you any way they please.

Larry8 wrote: "So the largest gun store can gouge any customer without any recourse. The retailer can gouge you any way they please." Larry8, that retailer can't gouge me if I don't buy from them. And if enough customers feel the same way, that retailer will be compelled to change. Or go out of business.

Right, I will never buy from them again. they are crooks.

peachhead said:

Some of you need to spend a year or two as a retailer. Especially in such a time as the last three years.
In between the big box stores getting discounts by purchasing thousands of pallets at a time and the wholesaler limiting everyone else by saying "you must buy this (that you don't want) in quantity to get this (that you do want) in single, I don't believe a good many of you would make it.
It's no longer the good old days. EVERYTHING costs more. So you think we as retailers are just going to arbitrarily jack up our prices because we are so greedy? No, we raise prices because OUR costs went up.

Click to expand...

Maybe you, but not all retailers operate the same. Cheaper Than Dirt is but one example.

bisleyfan41 said:

Maybe you, but not all retailers operate the same. Cheaper Than Dirt is but one example.

Click to expand...

CTD is what is known in the "trade" as a "short-liner." CTD does not carry a full range of products; in fact some gun makers chose not to sell to CTD, or sell only certain of the maker's products. Why? Because (in the days prior to the COVID-induced panic, CTD was one of the reliably-least-expensive sources for the products it sold. Gun makers don't like that - it distracts from the gun wholesalers' profits, and from that, the gun makers themselves.

So...during the COVID panic CTD had fewer products for sale than full-line retailers. To make a profit, CTD had to mark up its product prices, often above the prices charged by direct competitors, in order to stay in business. So the very strategy that made them a popular source for guns/ammo in the good ole days bit them in the butt when the bad times hit (and remain, to some extent).

I'm not making excuses for CTD - far from it. But don't think CTD's owners are greedy or stupid. They aren't. They're just trying to survive in a market that did not exist when CTD launched its business strategy.