I’ve been very grateful for the response from my readers to my appeal for help in accumulating .22LR ammunition with which to train disabled and handicapped shooters. You helped me with donations totaling over 4,000 rounds, and through judicious purchases and trades I managed to find another 6,000. All are now in the hands of those who’ll put them to good use this summer.
My own supplies of .22LR had, of course, become depleted as well, and I’ve been on the lookout for replacement stocks at halfway decent prices. I fear that the ‘new normal’ is rapidly hardening into a minimum price of 10c per round, which is obscene when compared to what we were paying just a few short years ago. Chalk it up to yet one more result of the Obama Economic Miracle (NOT!). Unfortunately, most dealers and resellers are fully aware of what they’ll have to pay to replenish their own supplies, so they’re jacking up prices on ammo that they may have had in stock for years or even decades. I can’t blame them, of course, but it makes life difficult for those of us on a budget.
However, I came across a gentleman who was looking for two particular firearms. Both are hard to find, and when they’re available they tend to be expensive due to scarcity. I happened to have both in my collection, in very good condition. He happened to have a great deal of .22LR ammunition. (He’s the kind of guy who for years bought a brick of the stuff every time he went to the supermarket, “just because”. I don’t know how much he’s got packed away in his basement, but I know he has three heavy-duty warehouse-type shelves piled high with it among his other ammo stocks.)
I didn’t have any plans to sell my guns, but he really wanted them. To sweeten the deal, he offered to trade large quantities of .22LR at his (pre-panic) purchase cost. The upshot is that he now has my guns, and I have a lot of .22LR ammo – enough to keep Miss D. and myself shooting for a few years, if we’re careful. I just hope we’ll be able to buy more when this eventually runs out . . .
Peter
That is what I call a win-win. I'm thinking that was your reward for going the extra mile and taking care of those kid's needs. Well done.
Nicely done, sir.
Nice. That's one reason to have a decent sized collection… if things get tight, you can always trade off one of "the kids" for something that's needful.
I hate to say it, but I agree that $0.10/round for .22 seems like it may well be the new normal. Last week I got some of those Federal "stay fresh" cans… they were on sale because they were dented and one or two of them had the seals broken. They were $0.12/round, and I thought that wasn't a bad deal (even before shipping).
It's to the point where I'm shooting not much .22 and a fair amount of 9mm, .38spl, and .45, all because I can reload those for not much more than I can buy .22 for. May as well practice with the real calibers at those prices.
More supply and demand, I fear, than anything else.