The Real Reason Behind the Primer Shortage

joe-nwt said:
This is not the first "primer shortage" for some of us. I suggest you learn from it.
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What I learned is that I don't shoot enough rifle to justify the 5,000 Federal Gold Medal Match small rifle and 5,000 Federal Gold Medal Match large rifle primers that I bought during the last "shortage." I still have about a thousand of each left and that is after selling some. :redface:

5,000 shotgun primers however is another matter. That won't last me more than a few months. ;)
 
Small pistol , lge rifle primers are in hard to come by in the north lately. When the gun show arrives in may I will be looking to buy some of each to last for a while. I am not one to hoard ,but if there are no primers. No Shooting

Straight Shooting

Budweiser2
 
When I started buying primers they were $10/K and in all the time since they have never gone down. I get a lot from Higginson's and for a long while there he was selling them for $24/K and when the dollar was approaching par low and behold the price went up to $28/K. At a gun show yesterday primers marked $20 when originally purchased were SELLING for $40 (a lot better return than the stock market of late) So buy as many as you can for they will never go down in price. To put it another way, if the gov't was to impose a $5 tax on beer or a strike in your province, I would bet you would stock up for your summer consumption I bet;)
 
My father was in the airforce during the las t war but he had friends who were handloaders during the war. The one thing that was short during the war was primers. It seems to me that we have two major wars occuring at this time so it seems reasonable that a rael primer shortage exists. I should also add that the maufacturers can sell primers to the militay ammuniyion plants a lot easier than sellling into the reatil market. maybe the primer shortage IS real.
 
rivetc78 said:
how much?
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35$/100.

Got his last 2 boxes, and I was feeling sorta bad for cleaning him out. Whenever I buy stuff, I try not to empty out the stock, but right now, all I seem to be able to find for .223 bullets is the lightweight stuff...

And for the record, I don't think that sitting on 300 bullets constitutes hoarding.
 
There is another reason that people will buy 5000-10000 or larger lots of primers. Consistancy. Some lots of primers are really bad for consistancy. I usually buy primers in 5000 lots. I don't really care what brand they are as long as there aren't any surprises. The surprises will usually show up in the first 20 rounds ove a chrony or with an unusually soft or hard opening bolt. These inconsistencies can be caused by a couple of things, metal cup thickness, primer compound or loader error.

When I come accross a decent batch, I keep it and put the others up for sale. They are usually more than adequate for hunting urposes.

Just to be clear here, I've even had erratic batches of CCI BR and Fiocchi Match primers.

That people are hoarding right now, may be true, it's happened before. Just realise there are more reasons to buy large quantities of primers than hoarding and that there are many out there that buy for other reasons.

5000 - 100000 primers isn't even enough for most stores to give a discount, unless you're going to buy 10000 bullets and enough brass and powder to load them as well.
 
I'm like Claybuster. Usually the amount of primers I store depends on application, i.e. how much shooting I'm doing. Since starting clays, 5000 looks like a small number. Loading for pistol shooting was the same. I would feel easy with 100 primers for my hunting rifle after the loads are settled on. It does make sense though to buy bulk when you know you will be doing a lot of shooting, especially with the way prices are going. I don't get many good feelings from having a lot of primers laying around unless I'm going to use them though. I feel basically the same way about powder.
 
.223Savage said:
He could have bought 1000 which would have lasted him a year and also left enough to keep 9 other shooters happy for a year each.
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Uhhh, small rifle primers tells me that he shoots a semi, and 1000 primers might last him a month; a year and only shoot 1000?
Now if it was magnum primers you were talking about.. then thats a different thing.
 
i hoard, like it was said above, its afree market, when i make my monthly trip to the shop, i have a list of what im useing, and i buy everything he has thats on my list. its a smaller shop, but i still lay back powder, primers and bullets every month.
 
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