Ammo prices going up.

fiddler said:
Unfortunate, but this isn't news. Prices have been dramatically increasing for several years now. Buy bulk. Buy it now. Reload. It won't get any cheaper, this is not a just a market fluctuation. Two years ago 7.62x39 was going for 140 per case, now people are ok with 250/case. I don't care, I stocked up on everything to point that it hurt my wallet.

Looking forward and not behind, it ain't going down any. If you don't see the market trend and are not willing to stock up, then pay the going price and hold your peace.
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I think your timeline is off a few years suggesting that surplus 7.62x39 was $140 a case two years ago as that it what it was costing us at wholesale. This ammo has been in the $160 to $190 range two years ago unless the seller was the importer and was sitting on it for several years before deciding to sell. The variance in current surplus 7.62x39 depends on if the seller is in fact the importer and or mainly a mail order facility or like us a retail store that buy from the importer. Your local dealer may get a better or worse price than us at wholesale depending on how much the buy, where they are located and what the shipping charges are. We are currently at $199/ case of 1000 for surplus. Phil.
 
Teapot said:
Why must we get our ammo from the US? They get their surplus directly from the former eastern bloc countries and can sell it for less than half of what we must pay. Why cannot Canadian businesses get the ammo for the same price as the Americans and sell it to us at the same low price?
I am sure this topic has been discussed many times before but I am too tired to search for half an hour for the answer.

I just bought a case (two sardine tins) of 7.62x54R and don't even have anything to shoot it with!
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This goes back to the economy of scale. There is ammo available in Europe and other locations other than the USA however you are bidding against big international companies (US) and would have to buy multiple containers to compete when in fact there is not near that much demand in Canada at the best of times to consume that much ammo on a continual basis. Phil.
 
With regards to domestic (US) produced ammo, yes in fact we have been advised that the prices will be going up at wholesale from 15-20 % in the spring. We ordered big to try and avoid this increase for a while but there is a kicker in this deal...if the ammo is not supplied and delivered by the date of price increase then we have to pay whatever price they (the manufacturers) decide on. We could of course cancel order order but that would just end up with no ammo being delivered at all at any price. In the short term some ammo may be coming in before the increase (none yet) so that is why we reduced our retail on some large bulk inventories like .223 that went from $ 598/ 1000 to $399/ 1000 even though we bought this at the much higher wholesale cost and are at or near or original cost. I'd like to say we are doing this because we are just nice guys but the reality is that we were afraid of being stuck with lots of bulk over priced ammo when some new stuff was received by us (and our competitors) at much lower prices. This is just the ebb and flow of retail capitalist supply and demand. Phil.
 
P of PDent said:
I think your timeline is off a few years suggesting that surplus 7.62x39 was $140 a case two years ago as that it what it was costing us at wholesale.
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Hi Phil, thats your prices, not mine. On one occasions we made bulk purchase from out of province and trucked it ourselves. Was less than 140. On several other occasions if you picked up your SKS from Milarm, you got the discount on a case of ammo, didn't matter how many cases. We picked up many rifles from Milarm, and subsequently many more cases of ammo. Even last fall, I picked up a Chinese military issue SKS, first case was 180, every case after that was 165. Did I mention that was less than six months ago, five minute drive from your shop? We bought SKS just to get the good price on a dozen cases of ammo. We didn't need the rifle.


Two places in town. One with high prices, one with low prices. A mountain of money spent at one shop, nothing spent at the other. I won't tell you how to run your business Phil, but Duhhh :slap:
 
fiddler said:
Hi Phil, thats your prices, not mine. On one occasions we made bulk purchase from out of province and trucked it ourselves. Was less than 140. On several other occasions if you picked up your SKS from Milarm, you got the discount on a case of ammo, didn't matter how many cases. We picked up many rifles from Milarm, and subsequently many more cases of ammo. Even last fall, I picked up a Chinese military issue SKS, first case was 180, every case after that was 165. Did I mention that was less than six months ago, five minute drive from your shop? We bought SKS just to get the good price on a dozen cases of ammo. We didn't need the rifle.


Two places in town. One with high prices, one with low prices. A mountain of money spent at one shop, nothing spent at the other. I won't tell you how to run your business Phil, but Duhhh :slap:
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That the nice thing about competition, you can buy from whomever you want , whenever you want. I won't suggest we are the lowest or highest prices in Canada or even locally but we sell lots of guns and ammo, including SKS's and 7.62x39. Some stores concentrate on certain styles of guns and parts of the firearms market while we are more generalist and supply a much larger range and price levels than some of our competitiors (like Milarm). Based on the volume of wholesale purchase, this will determine the wholesale cost including shipping. Using Milarm as an example they probably buy more milsurp guns and ammo than us and thus get a better wholesale price. We use very close to the same mark-ups as Milarm so if we are more at retail then we paid more. If Milarm charges less then buy from them...but be carefull as not everything they sell is less than us ( a recent example SVT 40 prices were significantly more than us initially than us but eventually came down probably to match ours). Phil.
 
It's only natural for a rise in new ammunition prices to drive up milsurp, as the demand for the latter rises as more shooters look to it as an alternative to the newly manufactured cartridges. Also, the rise in oil prices will raise the cost of other items such as food (which is oil intensive to produce and ship), and ammo, which is much costly to ship and probably requires a great deal of energy to produce (mining, smelting, etc.). Even if it's produced decades ago but has to come over from China or Europe, the cost will be influenced by oil prices.

There's always the further possibility that some dealers/importers might hold onto their stock until the prices rise, which will only add to the scarcity and price. In the US, just the buying and hoarding of ammo by private individuals after the presidential election showed how dramatically the cost could be driven by consumer buying habits.

I surely hope that a sympathetic CPC majority would be able to effect a change at NRCAN, that would at least remove some of the cost and delays associated with government regulation. But that's getting ahead of us!

Cheers,

Frank
 
fiddler said:
Two places in town. One with high prices, one with low prices. A mountain of money spent at one shop, nothing spent at the other. I won't tell you how to run your business Phil, but Duhhh :slap:
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The topic on how P&D is more expensive than company X or company Y has been debated on here a few times. I myself debated with Phil last fall on here about the price of a Rem 700 compared to Cabelas.

I have only been to Milarm a few times and I do recall that they don't sell any reloading supplies. Has that changed recently? You go down to NoSale Sports and they have nothing in stock as usual. What options are you left with? P&D if you want it now or if you can wait, order it thru the mail from someone like Mystic Precision and wait 3-4 weeks.

About 3 weeks ago, I was looking for a good price on a Bushnell 4200 6-24X50 Tactical. Believe it or not, the best price I found was at P&D. Thus, they got my business.
 
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