One of my friends who is well-connected in manufacturer and dealer circles tells me that a whole lot of wholesalers and manufacturers had been running full-tilt in recent months preparing for a Hillary presidency. They read the mainstream news and had convinced themselves that 2016 would be 2008 (or 2013, post-Newtown Massacre) all over again. Now they are sitting on a mountain of inventory. With the election of the Donald, for the first time in eight years, this oversupply has created a unique opportunity for genuine deals – or maybe even a return to pre-2008 normalcy in terms of prices.
I’ve started to see .22 rimfire ammunition at Walmarts, which I consider one barometer for ammo supply and availability. In some local gun stores, they’ve got lots of rimfire ammo – more than I’ve seen in a long time. And at a Field & Stream store almost an hour away, they’ve got pallets of the stuff. Yeah, it’s a little pricey, but it’s available.
Another example: my connected friend said he saw one big wholesaler’s six-figure inventory of PMags late in the summer. As the election came nearer, he watched as the supply dwindled to low five-figures and the prices begin to creep upwards. He chuckles as Palmetto State Armory now has D&H aluminum milspec magazines for 6.99 each. With free shipping. Palmetto State isn’t the only place with the same mags at that price. SlickGuns has ’em too. Folks, that’s a great price on a quality magazine. I’ve got probably a hundred of those and I paid closer to $10 for mine.
What have my fellow Armed Intelligensia members seeing in your respective necks of the woods? Are you finding some great deals on AR-15s, magazines and accessories, and plentiful ammo including rimfire?
$14 Lancers are a thing of beauty. Still not cheap, but I remember when PMags cost more than that.
I’m also seeing 5.56×45 go back to reasonable prices, though m855 is still retardedly expensive for some reason.
My perception is, there are still a lot of Rimfire Smaugs out there.
Every recent time I’ve gone into a LGS that has .22LR, there’s usually somebody buying about as many boxes as they can carry to the counter.
Which strikes me as a little odd, actually. Given her … predilections … I would have thought the threat of a HCR presidency would have had people buying .223 Rem / 5.56 x 45 and 7.62 x 39 instead.
As far as deals, I’ve found some good ones online, but, frankly, I’m now well enough stocked on magazines that I’m not really looking right now.
Same here in North/Central Maine. Only the small LGS have any .22 on the shelves and its all still $.10 a round. Big boxes are getting stock in, but folks are still buying as much as the store allows. I have 4 Walmarts within and hour of me and none of them have any rimfire that makes it to the shelves, it all sells right out of the shipping boxes the moment it comes in.
I noticed a small shelf of .22 bricks at a local sporting goods store. As customers grabbed a couple boxes making the shelf look even more empty, other customers moved in on the kill. When the dust settled, I saw an employee restock the shelf with more bricks taken from a pallet of bricks in the back room.
There is no shortage anymore, but marketing.
Totally stealing “Rimfire Smaug”, thank you
“There is something about you. Something you carry, something made of gold… but far more PRECIOUS…”
335 federal packs for 20 dollars are everywhere right now. Cci stingers and maxi mags have been found also. Dicks has cci 50 round gift pack for 5 dollars in abundance.
I still haven’t seen the 550 packs of federal bulk at Walmart for 3 years, that’s my barometer. Things won’t be back to normal until that is $18 either
Those days are gone. Forever. Walmart may end up having those bulk boxes again, but the new norm for pricing will be $22-25 per carton of 500/550
I have no problems finding 550 Federal bulk at my walmart. Granted, it’s not $20, but it’s pretty easy to find.
I took advantage of the Palmetto State Armory 10 Pmag / 10 Glock 18 / Magpul D60 combo and picked up a quantity of the D&H 30 round aluminum mags when they were $7.99 each. The Federal AE 124 grain 9mm at $9.99 / 50 is another winner.
Now is a great time to stock up, and holiday gun deals are pretty tasty as well. CA gun laws still suck, and more bans are coming my way. Even still, I need to buy another heavy duty shelf to store ammo. And the Mrs. and I are looking at land in WI.
PSA running special 10x PMAGs and 1000rd PMC 5.56 55gn for $370. Thats $9/mag and $0.28/rd.
Sure says industry overstock of mags and ammo.
? $370 for 1000 rounds is .37/round. Is it $280 per thousand? That would be a decent price!
They subtracted the value of the Pmags. $370 minus $90 is $280
That headline is a bit awkward. Good enough for me, but if a grammer NAZI sees it, you might get a lecture:-)
Don’t you mean “grammar Nazi?”
– signed “the Spelling Nazi” 😉
Man, it sucks being me.
The spelling police have given me several tickets. I think most of them are women. Women seem to be more nit picky. ?
You meine “pit-nicky” . . .?
Grammar Nazi is not PC. The acceptable term is alt-write.
Oh, now that’s funny.
I don’t shoot 22 nor do I plan to. But yeah I was positively flabbergasted at the deals on Slickguns which I perused yesterday. I forsee Black Friday for months-especially if Trump actually acts proactively for 2A rights…we’ll see.
IIRC, makers of .22 have been running at full tilt for years, not months.
The “sudden” availability may have more to do with bunkers being full, and the rest of us can now find it on the shelves.
Was at the gun show here in Phoenix yesterday, and prices are as high or higher than they ever were. Possibly, people are not worried that any money they spend on guns or ammo or gear won’t be wasted.
I also noticed that the ‘tactical’ guys weren’t there in their usual numbers, prompting me to think that the average people now think their gun rights are secure enough for them to buy again. Some of the ‘tactical’ vendors were complaining that business was slow, but I saw a lot of guns and ammo and mags being sold.
Yes. According to industry announcements — at least one reported here — production has been ramped up by quite a bit with nothing to do with elections.
Lots of rimfire ammo at all the local big boxes, including Gander Mountain, Dick’s, and Walmart in Sullivan, Orange and Nassau counties in NY, and at reasonable prices, too. I haven’t seen that in many a year.
Cabelas in Hamburg PA is my barometer. As of 11/27 they had tons of ammo with Federal bulk .22lr at .06 per round as well as a deal on Remington 9mm ammo for an astonishing .14 per round (with a mail in rebate.) Limit of 40 boxes. I bought a few boxes of the rimfire and 1,000 rounds of the 9mm. I think the drought might be over for the moment.
I have been starting to see .22 LR in my neck of the woods as well. One Sporting Goods retailer was selling Federal 525 round boxes of copper plated .22 LR for $28 each and they had three or four on the shelf (with a purchase limit of two boxes). They also had 50 round boxes for about $6 each. I have even seen 100 round boxes of CCI Mini-Mag .22 LR for around $9 each in decent quantities. Last but not least, I have been seeing odd brand .22 LR boxes of 50 rounds at a regional competitor to Wal-Mart … for the first time since January, 2013!
I won’t be running out to purchase large amounts of .22 LR unless the price drops below 4 cents per round … which I realize might never happen.
As for AR-15 magazine availability and pricing, I haven’t really been looking for them so I cannot comment.
Federal copper plated 525 round boxes for $28 are a price I haven’t seen in a long time. My .22 rifle likes only the copper plated rounds, used to be it was the Remington bonus boxes. I don’t think I’ve even seen a 525 box since Obama was first elected (back when .22s were 0.02 per round), which was also the last time I bought Mini Mags at 0.10 per round. I just gave up on it, and shot 9 mm instead. I just stopped looking, and started buying centerfire cartridges on line. Maybe I should take a peek again; I live in one of those areas where the retirees line up an hour before the truck arrives at WalMart and buy out the entire supply in less than an hour with the intent of reselling it at three times the price at local gun shows. I will not pay those prices. When these guys have to get ammo vendor licenses and have to comply with the paperwork and reporting requirements of the new California law, this practice will probably end.
If it is legal, I could ship you a 525 round box of the Federal copper plated .22 LR.
(I like to think that I am pretty sharp when it comes to various firearms laws. For the life of me, I cannot seem to recall laws about shipping a box of ammunition to a friend.)
Yeah, I don’t do .22 right now, but AR15 stuff has stabilized back to start of year prices….I really think retailers have bought up a ton of ammo and mags at higher price points in anticipation of the impending HRC panic and have to move that inventory out at a higher price point to get their money back…once that stuff is cleared out of the system, I suspect we’ll see a new normalized price point that’s somewhat less than we see now. Also, I suspect a lot of new gun owners are buying ammo and mags these days as well, so the market is probably larger than it’s ever been in history.
I live in Southern Ontario, about an hour from the Buffalo bridge crossing into New York.
The supply here is back up; our local hardware chain – which ran dry for more than a year post-Newtown – is fully stocked again. My local outfitter has 525 packs of Golden Bullets (lots in stock, no limits) for $0.09/round, including tax (13% here in Canada).
During the post-Newtown shortage in the U.S. we definitely felt it here, limits on boxes per customer, shortages in many stores. All seems back to normal now in terms of supply, but prices are staying higher than pre-2008 levels.
.22 ammo, well that’s a hell no, there is still NONE in my area, as for ar15 guns and stuff, well i got my m&p sport 2 @ $700 pre election, it’s actually around $1000 for the same rifle now, strange I know. Mags, well we have our lovely magazine ban here in CO, but I got lucky about a week ago, noticed a 3 pack of TROY battle mags, “10” round, but have the size of 30 round along with the spring and follower, voids the warranty if dissasseble as they are plasti-welded floor plates, well i got the pack for $15 because the new guy didn’t know any better, and figured at that price I’d void the warranty. The ban isn’t enforced very heavily anyway, but I figure having 4 of them taped in pairs are great for a shtf setup, and I don’t use them, if the ban is lifted they will see lots of use.
$700 for a sport 2? They usually go for less, and at $700 your in nicely built by self territory. I’m sorry. Next time start buying one piece at a time and build yourself. Cheapest I have done is $430 mil-spec.
While the .22s might be more available the prices are still double what they were a few years ago. Bulk ammo that used to be on sale for $10 brick is now over $20. Not much of a bargain in my estimation. As far as I can see its still rip off time in the ammo world. The same with surplus guns. Rifles that were selling for under a hundred bucks are now going for 3-4 times as much. I know that demand drives prices, but damn, people. Poor working class folks are almost out of the market due to high prices.
+1 2007 had Winchester 525 packs at Walmart for $7.99, of which I still have several…they can keep it for $20+…be patient. When steel jacketed 7.62×39 was reclassified as unimportable, it doubled in price (and then some). After a few years, the foreign makers switched over to copper jacketed, and the price went back down to $89 a case (of 1000!),
and stayed there until BHO was elected. We have at least a four year reprieve, and I see prices dropping a lot more in the coming years.
The real problem is and has been for a long time hoarding. Now that sane people are making it into office and driving out the lunatics like Crooked, gun enthusiasts may realize having 10,000 rds in a closet isn’t perhaps either necessary or wise. The law of supply & demand will kick in, and ALL of us will be much happier. We’ll sleep sounder knowing the crypto-commie’s no longer in the White House and go to the range smiling at the thought that Bloomberg’s false-skirt bunnies are losing ground all around. Happy times.
SlickGuns is not store! its a website with deals
Even funnier, the Slickguns link in the article is just the Palmetto deal…
I’m not seeing any bricks of .22LR plinking ammo yet. Target twenty-twos are available at prices that suck.
Report from Houston:
.22 LR stock looks just about normal with no obvious hoarding or panic buying.
.22 WMR still scarce though, if you find it at all you may only have one brand and load to choose from.
I kind of gave up on .22 LR years ago and went to cheap 9mm, since the only use I had for it was plinking and I just couldn’t get it for years. :/
Same here. Can reload 9mm now for the price of .22lr (mainly because I found a cheap lead src). It is more work but better practice.
However, with 3-5 million gun owners (asleep at the wheel) in Kalifornia facing the “AMMO BAN” the stress on the system is still there.
Living here (if one call it that) truly sucks, being ruled by FASCIST overseers put into office by brain stem only voter block.
I’m already seeing .22LR at 4 – 5 ¢ / round online.
Being that I stocked up over the years before and after Sandy Hook, I’m pretty much set for quite a while. So, I’m not buying ***t unless prices take another significant drop…. and they WILL. The law of supply / demand will make it so.
I went to the local gun show a couple of weeks ago (right after the election). The place was pretty packed, but I did not see much money exchanging hands. In recent years past, the NICS forms tables were full, with a waiting line to sit. I think I saw a couple of people filling out 4473s in the whole place. The faces of the vendors were clearly in the “sour puss” category. I heard one vendor say, “That’s an insult! This is a gun show, not a garage sale!”
Consumers can confidently SIT TIGHT for a good while now. Prices will continue to fall. Good for us!
Based on my inventory i;ll need more 22l;s on about december 20th 2045, long after im dead.
Its hit and miss here in Alaska. Good quantities coming in, but gone in hours
When you can buy a Case of .223 cheaper than .22 I say GFYS
In the OKC area I see low end .22 (Aquila, American Eagle) consistently in stock at Academy for five to six cents a round with 1000 round per day limits. Higher quality stuff like CCI is sometimes on the shelves at a dime a round. The stock at Wally World still goes pretty fast because nobody’s told the Tuesday morning old farts club that Trump won the election. They’re still convinced that they can make money selling bricks of Federal plinking ammo for $75 at a gun show.
I bought a dozen 30 round Hexmags on line the weekend before the election for $8.00 each. That’s been the going price and they represented a little “just in case” speculation for me. I’ve been happy with the Hexmags as a slightly lower price alternative to the Magpuls.
I know guys who were buying Magpul 30 rounders by the case last summer as investments. We’ll see how long they want to sit on their money. If those guys get tight on cash there may be some good deals in the NOS market.
5.56 prices have stayed pretty stable in Oklahoma. Steel case 55 gr ball is around .27 to .28 a round at Academy and brass case Federal 55 gr is about a dime a round more. Its interesting to see that the 20 round boxes of 5.56 at the local Academy are often cheaper per round than the larger quantities. I’m thankful for the calculator on my phone.
I bought lots of bullets, powder and primers over the past months anticipating that reloading components would go away when the map turned blue, so I have two or three years’ supply to keep me busy. I plan to retire (again) in about 18 months so I hope to find some more time to go out and shoot.
22 lr been plentiful for a while here in Phx, only issue is some sellers don’t seem to understand that.
i have been able to consistently get copper played HV for $35/brick at my gun club. not terrible but manageable.
i still see some shops thinking they can charge $50 for a brick of garbage thunderbolt.
Thunderbolts are not garbage–my Rugers can CONSISTENTLY hit dime size objects from 50 yards with Thunderbolts (or any of 10 other types)–maybe it’s you
Or maybe it’s the rifle. My Savage shoots (or at least shot back when I still could get ammo) Remington Goldens very accurately, but Thunderbolts were all over the place.
I am looking forward to rotating my excess .22 stock into targets and small animals. With the pressure off for now, I have even added a new caliber to the collection. I’ve never had anything chambered for 7.62×39 and recently acquired a PTR32. Diversity is good. Especially with guns.
Big 5 had bricks on sale this Black Friday for $89….
Yeah.
Where I live .22 is still apparently the future currency of the upcoming apocalypse. None to be found unless it’s sky high, and even that is rare.
Still haven’t seen anything in Walmart. And I go to for Walmarts within a 30-minute driving time the attendant in Sporting Goods says as soon as it comes in its sold right out of the shipping containers as well. Local gun shops have limited supplies and it’s 10 to $0.12 around so not even worth getting better to order it online still. I live in Florida just so you know.
.22LR here seems only a little more abundant, and the price hasn’t changed yet. I’m actually more interested in .22 mag.
I wouldn’t say that 22LR is “plentiful” in my neck of the woods just yet, but there’s definitely more than before and prices have slowly started to drop.
At last weekends gun show I saw a lot of former 22LR price gougers being forced to lower their absurd prices. Walked the room for several hours, looking for deals and watched the tables of these idjits. Lots of ammo, almost no purchases and it serves them right for hoarding it and then trying to f-up people with their prices for 2+ years.
Ah, Karma… thou art a cruel but fair mistress. LOL!
Cabelas had Gen3 pmags with windows for 12.99 in the month leading up to the election. I bought “enough”
I am getting lots of emails with pretty good deals on other stuff, definitely a buyers market right now, which I plan to do a lot of once Christmas presents and end of the year finances are squared away.
.22LR and .22 WMR is readily available in Western Montana. Purchased 6 boxes of Federal 50 gr. .22 WMR for $11.49 each and a 1,000 rd box of Winchester T22 for $50 two days ago.
PSA ran 33rd G18 mags for $24.99 and bought a few. Joeboboutfitters ran 3 Pmag MOE for $15 on BF. Mags are definitely on the cheaper end I’ve seen in a while. Haven’t seen cheap 22lr for a while, but I don’t necessarily look for it because of the years of drought and price gouging.
Face it, they got the prices up. They’re not going to bring them down, unless everybody stops buying.
When the .22 hoarders can no longer make a profit at the gun shows, they will quit buying, and all of a sudden there will be rimfire ammo on every shelf. Prices will come down very quickly.
could not tell you. one ammo seller in town that Wally guy. back in September they quadrupled their supply of centerfire and stopped selling rimfire.
Our Walmart pulled all rimfire except .17HMR, and now has roughly a half shelf of .30-30, a good deal of 5.56 and 7.62×39, a few boxes of assorted high-power centerfire calibers, and a truckload of handgun ammo and shotshells.
Rimfire is just about dead to me. I came into shooting post-Gunpocalypse, and have never enjoyed actual availability of the stuff, not at reasonable prices. My practice gets done with airguns and cast bullets in rifle, pistol, and shotgun. I’m going to try selling my .22 this winter to finance an AR lower and maybe some reloading components.
I’ve noticed more big box store supply at lower prices from the past 2+ years (IIRC…)
Getting 22 rimfire online was always possible IF I was willing to pay 2-3X from what was common 5+ years ago. Therefore, the market never failed – although it angered those unwilling to pay…
I have yet to see 22lr at Walmart in Maine. Haven’t bought any since 2012, either. Here’s hoping your headline proves true in 2017. I suspect there’s still plenty of folks like myself who would love to pick up a brick or two without lurking around the delivery platform for hours.
What a nutty economy. .22 ammo is the very last thing that politicians would go after. Obama didn’t try to go after .22s after Newton, even though the little freak used one to start the whole thing off.
A run on ARs, .233s and handguns I understand… they give leftists a hate-boner. But the hoarding of .22s in the wake of a bad election or event has always confused me.
.22 LR is kind-of-sort-of a “substitute good” that was pulled up in price along with the mainstream center fire calibers. A lot of things went into the “panic buying” – the aforementioned upward drag from other calibers, plus it’s just so versatile and cheap – and you can store a LOT of it in a relatively small volume. I think people stocking up also figured it would make a potentially good “barter item” if there were some sort of ammo ban or ultra scarcity. Lots of new shooters coming into the fold – .22 is a very typical starting point, so there’s that aspect of the demand. I also have an offbeat theory that at the range people still burn up .22 at the rates they did when it was more plentiful. I think that psychologically we’ve come to think of .22 as that “cheap and common stuff you can shoot as much of as you want” and burn up more of it than other calibers at the range. And when we have kids, grandkids, nephews, perhaps an attractive lady friend we’re introducing to shooting with a .22… do we really want to be the Grinch and say, “hey, ammo crunch gotta conserve?”
I have an H&R Model 922 for no reason other than its been in the family for 60 years. I would not own any 22 otherwise.
https://www.gunandgame.com/attachments/h-r-model-922-revolver-001-jpg.47437/
At $0.10/round and above, I’ve got all I can buy.
I just checked Slickguns, and 22s in the big box are going for about 5.5 cents each delivered. That will make a nice Christmas present from me to me! Happy Holidays everyone.
Here in Louisville, KY there’s lots of 22lr. Cabelas had 500 round bricks for either $55 or $75 (elite target ammo, whatever that is.) I passed. There was some 100 boxes of CCI for $12 to $15.
However, 22 Mag is still unobtainium. And my PMR is the wife’s and the nephew’s favorite thing to shoot, of course. That thing won’t cycle just anything. Great fun when it’s fed stuff it likes, otherwise, not so much.
Prices respond to the buying power of the US Dollar.. Back when Ike was President the dollar was worth 55 cents when compared to a 1940 dollar. Government spending and printing money to expand the welfare state, not military or space programs has been driving the printing presses.
Back in the early 1960s I bought a 10,000 round case of Winchester .22 LR for $100.00 from the local hardware store. I’ll do the math: That’s 1¢ a round.
In 1974 the Congress passed the Budget Reform Act which opened the floodgates. Inflation and spending has been out of control since.
Since 1975 the dollar has lost 96% of its buying power. I’m amazed at how many products have remained affordable.
My local Walmart still doesn’t have any rimfire .22 at any price.
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