Omega21
Active Member
Hi All,
A well known ammo vendor shared this on another website and I thought folks here would appreciate hearing his perspective on a question about ammo prices currently:
"As far as ammo [prices] going up, with copper prices way down in recent months they should be building ammo for a good price right now and prices on brass case ammo should not be justified to increase at the manufacturing level. However, its the busy season this time of year, and its been the busiest we have ever seen it this month. A big increase in the number of large orders by speculators that ammo is as low as it will be for a while and they may or may not be right. Additionally a problem with having a lot of smaller dealers, IE gunshow, gun stores, home FFL, and dabblers buying up a large percentage of the available ammo speculating they will be able to make a lot of money on it closer to the election. This causes major problems for operations like us, where we specialize in "special purchases" of large lots of a single item that has been slow selling or overstocked for our supplier at a greatly reduced price so we can buy it cheap to sell it cheap. If our suppliers are selling ammo left and right they do not want to make deals to move the inventory, they just say stuff "its selling steady so why cut the price and be sold out when we can get our full price selling it case by case" Etc Etc. The bright side is that supplies look good on most popular calibers in some form or another and spring is just around the corner and may cause the typical slow down in the market that will be needed to have the leverage to strike better than average deals on a lot of different stuff, and I will be there to manipulate that situation as best I can. The flip side is that if things do not slow down in the spring and we are forced into accepting the wholesalers asking prices on all ammo, a lot of "special purchase deals" just will not happen, and we will have to raise prices on stock acquired at higher cost. "
A well known ammo vendor shared this on another website and I thought folks here would appreciate hearing his perspective on a question about ammo prices currently:
"As far as ammo [prices] going up, with copper prices way down in recent months they should be building ammo for a good price right now and prices on brass case ammo should not be justified to increase at the manufacturing level. However, its the busy season this time of year, and its been the busiest we have ever seen it this month. A big increase in the number of large orders by speculators that ammo is as low as it will be for a while and they may or may not be right. Additionally a problem with having a lot of smaller dealers, IE gunshow, gun stores, home FFL, and dabblers buying up a large percentage of the available ammo speculating they will be able to make a lot of money on it closer to the election. This causes major problems for operations like us, where we specialize in "special purchases" of large lots of a single item that has been slow selling or overstocked for our supplier at a greatly reduced price so we can buy it cheap to sell it cheap. If our suppliers are selling ammo left and right they do not want to make deals to move the inventory, they just say stuff "its selling steady so why cut the price and be sold out when we can get our full price selling it case by case" Etc Etc. The bright side is that supplies look good on most popular calibers in some form or another and spring is just around the corner and may cause the typical slow down in the market that will be needed to have the leverage to strike better than average deals on a lot of different stuff, and I will be there to manipulate that situation as best I can. The flip side is that if things do not slow down in the spring and we are forced into accepting the wholesalers asking prices on all ammo, a lot of "special purchase deals" just will not happen, and we will have to raise prices on stock acquired at higher cost. "
There were all sorts of speculation on reasons then. Everything from the war effort to government intervention. A CCI official however confirmed the simple truth. Folks wanted those primers! He said their annual output had been right around $8M for years. That year - this was in April - he said they were already over $10M!!! Had added a shift and were cranking out primers 24/7 for the first time in their history and in the process of installing more equipment. 
