Where to get cheap .22 WMR (Magnum)?

762mm

762mm

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Hi,

Let me start by saying that the last time I have bought this ammo was a couple of years ago... when 50 rounds could be had for 5$ or less. I have just verified the LeBaron catalogue prices on Winchester & Remington .22 Magnum (as I have a .22 WMR rifle on order) and they range between 12$ to 20$ per box of 50!

So, is there some sudden & temporary shortage of .22 WMR going on right now or are these prices standard? If so, where can you buy cheap .22 magnums these days? I've had much luck with Wal-Mart and their selection of .22LR recently, but I'm not sure if they have the magnums as well (or how much they go for). I don't know whether Canadian Tire would have them either...

Any insight would be very appreciated, as I was planning on shooting my new rifle a lot for target practice (because the .22LR seems a bit too underpowered to be considered as a serious training caliber for my liking). Thanks in advance!
 
I Bought a bunch of Winchester Dyna point from walmart last year.
It is copper plated, NOT jacketed. Made my barrels pretty dirty (leaded) quickly, but it is cheap. $7.00 a box or so IIRC.

Didn't shoot great, but not too bad for the price...
 
Boomer454 said:
I Bought a bunch of Winchester Dyna point from walmart last year.
It is copper plated, NOT jacketed. Made my barrels pretty dirty (leaded) quickly, but it is cheap. $7.00 a box or so IIRC.

Didn't shoot great, but not too bad for the price...
Click to expand...

Yeah, but the ballistics on that stuff are only just a hair better than 22lr hyper velocity.

I picked up a brick of CCI VMAX ammo a few days ago for $140
 
The LeBaron prices are pretty good since you won't need to add shipping. Win JHP are $52 for 250 which is a bit over $10 a box. You are not going to do much better than that. Consider it a bargain because the same ammo goes for about $9 in the US in US dollars.

Long gone are the days of $5 or $7 a box 22 Win Mag.
 
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Thanks for the info guys. And yes, you are right... last time I bought .22 WMR was when we got a Marlin semi-auto in that caliber (model 9822 or something like that) - the Marlin was bought at Canadian Tire for around $300-350, so I guess it was a long time ago indeed...

Anywho, personally I think that the price difference between .22LR and .22 Mag is unjustified; the larger brass & a little added powder CAN'T be costing that much more. If you can get 525 Federal Champions (.22LR) at Wal-Mart for $21 or 333 Winchester .22LR for $9.98, there's no real reason behind having another similar .22 rimfire to be going for over $100 (for the same amount of bullets), unless they're super-high quality and have gold plated tips or something. Twice the price would be reasonable for larger brass/more powder, but not over 5x ! :eek:

I guess what the companies need these days is a little more competition, as they're getting as comfortable as Big Oil with their monopoly games. I wish guys like Norinco would start shipping ammo in quantities over here, that would definitely bring Winchester, Federal, CCI and Remington back to reality.

Well, I guess I'll have to bite the bullet and make the credit card people even happier next time I get ammo for my new gun. I just wish there was an explanation for these kinds of prices, as salaries have not climbed 200% in the last 10 years. Add this and everything else going up in price and you see how bad the little guy gets fcked more and more every year.

Hence the attempted disarmament of hard working tax payers that we are experiencing in north America these days... because "Yes We Can!" (or rather 'they' can).

:rolleyes:


Thanks for the info once again though, much appreciated.
 
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.22WMR has always been pricey, since the dawn of ages (Savage 93-GL was my very first gun).

The demand is fairly low, compounded with "high-velocity" .22LR that nearly matches the .22 mag, thus making the round less and less attractive.

Cheapest is Wal-Mart. Last year Winchester Super-X was $6.97 a brick, now it's up to $8.97. However, I find the Super-X extremely dirty, and inaccurate to boot. That is, if it fires to begin with. Out of a fifty count, I usually got three or four duds. The Dyna-Points mentioned elsewhere (for roughly the same price) were no better. I'm not a fan of potentially half-live cartridges when I open the bolt up to extract them, so I stopped shooting those. Went up to the .22wmr CCI stuff, the cheapest for FMJ is around $13. I know one other type I tried for $10.98, but I can't remember what it was, and I highly doubt the price hasn't budged in two years.


I do agree on the price, but I can't do anything about it. Just going to buy a .22LR and keep the .22mag as a safe queen/souvenir of my youth.
 
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I've worked up a load for my 222. Using 14 grains of 4227 and some Corbin swaged bullets made out of spent 22lr's at ~2700 fps and sounding like a vigorous sneeze, tallys up to maybe $.15 a shot (that's $7.50 per box), and hits *MUCH* harder than any WMR.

Ditto for my Hornet - reloads with same sound level, exponentially more hitting power, and less cost. All it costs you is the time to reload them.

Still, I shoot a lot of WMR anyway. It might cost more, but it saves me the hassle of collecting, cleaning, prepping and loading brass
 
firemachine69 said:
I do agree on the price, but I can't do anything about it. Just going to buy a .22LR and keep the .22mag as a safe queen/souvenir of my youth.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I guess you're right. But like I said, if we allowed companies like Norinco, CZ and the various Russian gun makers to enter the north-american ammo market, then a box of 50 .22 WMR would probably run for around $3 or so... which is the RIGHT price for this type of a caliber.

Raising prices because something is not popular is a vicious circle and not in accordance of marketing rules - supply & demand, that's the key. If something isn't popular, it should DROP in price, not go up! If it goes up, the company clearly has a moron in charge of its' marketing & sales dept.

People will not buy expensive + unpopular items, therefore the production plant needs to drop retail costs (even if they're at a loss at first) in order for their product to regain some popularity and start selling again.

If this is truly the case for the heightened prices of unpopular ammo, then the industry clearly has the whole thing backwards. :kickInTheNuts:
 
prosper said:
I've worked up a load for my 222. Using 14 grains of 4227 and some Corbin swaged bullets made out of spent 22lr's at ~2700 fps and sounding like a vigorous sneeze, tallys up to maybe $.15 a shot (that's $7.50 per box), and hits *MUCH* harder than any WMR.

Ditto for my Hornet - reloads with same sound level, exponentially more hitting power, and less cost. All it costs you is the time to reload them.

Still, I shoot a lot of WMR anyway. It might cost more, but it saves me the hassle of collecting, cleaning, prepping and loading brass
Click to expand...

I was not aware that rimfire reloading was possible - I always thought that a rimfire was single-use & disposable brass. But then again, I am a novice to reloading. My first .357/.38 dies for my new press are in the mail as we speak, lol!
 
prosper said:
222 is a centerfire round, as is the Hornet


:)
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Right... thanks! In the meantime, I did some reading. Here's some info on the process you were talking about:

hxxp://www.mrpc.info/docs/bultip01.pdf


Thanks for the input... I may be in the market for a .22 hornet at some point, lol! I wonder if dies exist for swaging .22LR, or if you need to buy the whole press... ?
 
762mm said:
I was not aware that rimfire reloading was possible - I always thought that a rimfire was single-use & disposable brass. But then again, I am a novice to reloading. My first .357/.38 dies for my new press are in the mail as we speak, lol!
Click to expand...

He is not reloading rimfire, the .222 is a centerfire cartridge. The .22 rimfire brass is swaged and used to make the jackets for the .222 bullets. Very cheap supply that way.

Edit - I see Prosper beat me to it...

Mark
 
Thanks. Are there dies for swaging .22LR that you can use on a regular reloading press? It might be a nice project for the future, if I ever get myself a centerfire .224...

:)
 
I think there are. Look up corbin swaging dies on Google, and see what they have. For what it's worth, I bought the bullets at a gun show, and don't have the swager myself (they're quite expensive; the cheapest would be several hundred dollars; more if you want to make soft points instead of hollow points)
 
While win. dynapoint 22 mag is cheap, you get what you pay for!!! It is very inaccurate, it is slow in speed, in fact their are faster 22 l.r. hyper-velocity rimfire bullets!! I have tried it in my above aver. 22 mags eg. Sako, Krico, Win, and it groups worse than the cheapest 22 rimfire ammo. That,s why it's sold at Wallymart!! Check out the slow speed, you are better off using hyper-vel 22 l.r. ammo, much more accurate!!
 
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