Businesses price gouging ammo right now

[coop44]

Gouging is such an ugly term. I call it profiteering, still it's taking advantage of a situation.

 

[snarlingdog]

 

[Dinglenutz]

Arbitrage?

 

[v0lcom13sn0w]

shoulda got when the gettin was good!

 

[Lazyfaire]

Our 'favorite' site just sent me an ad. CTD has 124gr white box 9mm Winchester (50 rounds) on sale for $59.84

$1.20 a round!

 

[v0lcom13sn0w]

Our 'favorite' site just sent me an ad. CTD has 124gr white box 9mm Winchester (50 rounds) on sale for $59.84

$1.20 a round!

scumbags

 

[Mikej]

scumbags

That's even worse than some of the ads here. For now, anyway.

 

[Lazyfaire]

Dont remember the exact price now but they also had Extact 556 for about $35/20 rounds (M855 55 gr)

For the truly hard up I guess!

 

[spider]

I really liked reading all 14 pages of this thread almost 5 months later.
Some of you need to check out your very own responses.
Then stop buying ammo and firearm related items, so you do not upset yourselves. If whenever you think a normalcy will return any...time...soon...

 

[DizzyJ]

I really liked reading all 14 pages of this thread almost 5 months later.
Some of you need to check out your very own responses.
Then stop buying ammo, so you do not upset yourselves.

I would imagine the prices at the beginning of the thread would be a decent deal now.

 

[jdub75]

Bimart is still reasonable! But agreed, its ugly out there. Remember tho, that a lot of your local shops buy via a distributor, who may be the one marking things up the most between the manufacturer, and the local guy.

 

[N Ida]

Price Gouging is a Commie term and only Commies would use it. If you don't like a price move on. If you can do it better or do it for less then do it. That's how prices are controlled. Introduce government and that's when the problems begin.

 

[Jims Custom Stocks]

Was just on a SHOT show seminar where the Winchester rep was talking about the ammo situation. He had an interesting perspective: There were 9 million people buying a gun for the first time in 2020. Each of the new owners could reasonably expect to be able to buy a couple of boxes of ammo with each gun so 18 million boxes of ammo for first time buyers. Also the Chinese virus has impacted many manufacturers slowing production. Then there is the Remington bankruptcy that shut down production for a number of months while the fate of their ammo manufacturing was up in the air. They are now owned by Vista Outdoor Group. They are just now getting back to full production. Naturally with the increased demand, supplies of brass, copper and lead are limited. I always think that there are going to be people with more money than brains wanting to buy ammo at any price. So my system is to buy extra when supplies are plentiful and ammo goes on sale lots of the time. Then wait until the next panic buying cycle hits and sell about half of my ammo at highly inflated prices to people with too much money. This works out in such a manner that the ammo I bought when prices were low is essentially free because the panic buyers are more than compensating me. This is also a good time to take up loading your own ammo.

 

[Lasers]

I can't wait to see a sale or a rebate on ammo again... I remember buying 20 round packs of federal 5.56 for 25c a round and then getting 5c back on rebate.... don't think we'll ever see that again.

 

[HaveGun]

When I stopped by the LGS today, they had just got in some ammo. Some hunting ammo and .45 Colt went on the normal shelves, but the Sig and Hornady defense ammo went on the shelf behind the counter where the primers used to be.

I joked with the guy at the counter that 9mm is so valuable now that he has to put it behind the counter. He frowned and said they just did inventory and discovered that they lost a huge amount of ammo to theft. Mostly the small 20-round boxes of premium ammo, so they are now keeping it behind the counter. Sad.

But they still have the same prices. My .45 Colt ammo was $36 a box of 50, which is half what it goes for online, and a can of powder was still $30.

 

[CLT65]

But they still have the same prices. My .45 Colt ammo was $36 a box of 50, which is half what it goes for online, and a can of powder was still $30.

Youch! I'm glad I don't have to pay $36/box for .45 Colt. I shoot a lot of it, or a fair amount at least. At pre-panic powder and primer costs, my reloads cost about a nickel a round. I can't imagine paying a buck and a half for .45 ammo.

It's crazy how people are. Fear and panic make us do weird things. I was in Bi-mart a couple days ago and heard an employee at the gun counter complaining to another employee about how rude and pushy some customers are when the ammo comes in, how one customer recently grabbed ammo out of her hands. She said she didn't want to deal with "those jerks" any more.

 

[HaveGun]

Youch! I'm glad I don't have to pay $36/box for .45 Colt. I shoot a lot of it, or a fair amount at least. At pre-panic powder and primer costs, my reloads cost about a nickel a round. I can't imagine paying a buck and a half for .45 ammo.

I normally only shoot reloads, and since I cast, my cost is pretty low as well. But, I did an inventory of my "secondary" pistol calibers; namely .45 Colt and 10 mm, and realized I was low on cases for both. Got some 10 mm cases headed my way, and figured since .45 Colt cases are either hard to find, or ridiculously priced, I might as well get some loaded ammo just for the cases.

 

[RedRover]

NVM

 

[MaxwellEdison]

But they still have the same prices. My .45 Colt ammo was $36 a box of 50, which is half what it goes for online, and a can of powder was still $30.

A retailer keeping “pre-panic” prices is just dumb. It simply means that in short order they will run out of ammo and not have ANY ammo at ANY price. Further exacerbating the shortage in the process.
Economics 101 for the win!

I also know that if I walked into a retailer and saw ammo at pre-panic prices, I would scoop up as much as I could even though I don’t need it. I might then turn around and flip that ammo at a nice profit. The term of art for that is called “arbitrage”; making money from the disconnect between the unusually low price and the current market price.

All of that said I do understand why some retailers - especially local ones - will sometimes still sell at yesterday’s prices. They don’t want to deal with online lynch mobs who don’t understand how supply and demand is supposed to work. As we saw in this very thread there will always be a small but vocal minority of gun owners who will dutifully play the role of victim and scream “They are p...p...p...p...p...PRICE GOUGING me! Don’t they know they’re supposed to be ‘good guys’? Don’t they know that since I didn’t buy ammo when it was plentiful and cheap, they’re now supposed to save me from myself by selling at less than current market value? It’s. Not. FAIR!!!”

Funny thing is, if you ask these same people “Can I buy your house today for the same price it was at two or three years ago?” they will look at you like you’re crazy.

Some of you will laugh, yet there were people in this very thread who exhibited precisely that type of faulty thinking. Because when logical & reasoned thinking go up against emotional thinking...more often than not emotions will prevail.

I wish our public high schools would be required to teach two things:

1. Personal Finance; and

2. Critical Thinking.

We’d all be better off if they did.

(Back in the 1980’s, Personal Finance WAS a required class for juniors here in Oregon. Or at least it was in my school district. It was probably one of the most useful classes I took, too.)

 

[HaveGun]

Well, they limit purchases to 1 can of powder and 2 boxes of ammo per household, per day.