What to stock up on?

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All the new shooters rushing out to buy guns are unlikely to compete for reloading components.
This could turn into a teachable moment where you find good people to take under your wing and mentor in reloading. The business will produce whatever we can consume, and more demand in normal times will have more product being produced and larger suppliers. We can make this work for us if we act right.
 
I was absent for the last ammo and reloading component shortage. I know people were finding some powders to be scarce. Were bullets, primers, and brass also scarce?

I'm simply looking to build some inventory because I presently have only about a year's supply of primers, bullets, and powder. I don't want to find myself in need during the next cycle of demand exceeding supply and increasing prices.

I'm intending to buy a few 8 pound jugs of powders soon and another few when there might be holiday sales toward the end of the year.

I'm really trying to gauge how many years worth of primers and bullets I should stock up. Were these scarce or costly in previous shortages?

During the last shortage everything got scarce. Powder and primers may have been the first but bullets and brass soon followed. Even some reloading tools were scarce for a while. Of course guns were also scarce.

A few things were worse than others and a few are still scarce. Federal Match Primers and Co-Ax presses come to mind.

I posted in another thread that I went from having a years worth of shooting stuff on hand to two election cycles. But I didn't buy all of that at once and I didn't buy it during shortages when prices were high. Also keep in mind that local fire codes cover some component storage.
 
I posted in another thread about dollar cost averaging. If it’s available and it’s a little more expensive, it’s still smart to continue buying if you’re going to use it. At least for people that have a year supply or less, they should maintain stock because prices could still go up from here.
 
The gun show venders/flippers are the ones that irritate me, they start buying as soon as they smell blood in the water, (election) and they have the capital to wipe out all the target inventory in a store if they wanted to, such as primers. That starts the shortages for us.

You'll see all the primers and powders, that are getting scarce, show up in the gun shows at a highly inflated price, as soon as the panic buying hits full intensity.

Now, with the virus, the gun shows are shut down and the flippers are stuck with all this stuff they bought to flip for the up coming election and can't unload it, Now they are cash poor and scrounging like the rest of us. Good for them, I hope they choke on it.
 
The gun show venders/flippers are the ones that irritate me, they start buying as soon as they smell blood in the water, (election) and they have the capital to wipe out all the target inventory in a store if they wanted to, such as primers. That starts the shortages for us.

You'll see all the primers and powders, that are getting scarce, show up in the gun shows at a highly inflated price, as soon as the panic buying hits full intensity.

Now, with the virus, the gun shows are shut down and the flippers are stuck with all this stuff they bought to flip for the up coming election and can't unload it, Now they are cash poor and scrounging like the rest of us. Good for them, I hope they choke on it.
I don’t like to admit it, but I feel the same way. There was a guy that came from Tennessee to our local gun shows, during the last shortages, and he would buy up any powders from the other vendors and then mark them way up, sometimes over $40 per pound.
 
In short, Nothing.

In my opinion, we are at the point in the current panic where, "a fool and his money are soon parted". Don't be the fool that gets sheared like a sheep because he mistakenly believes this panic is the "new normal". It is not.

I'm not shopping because I'm panicked. I'm shopping because I'm stuck indoors and have about worked my way through my components.

I get the fool and his money thing. I'm looking at a used turret press so I can load more, faster.
 
In short, Nothing.

In my opinion, we are at the point in the current panic where, "a fool and his money are soon parted". Don't be the fool that gets sheared like a sheep because he mistakenly believes this panic is the "new normal". It is not.

I think that's prematurely cynical. I started the thread back in the fall when almost everything was abundant and cheap. I just checked Powder Valley for my favorite ball powder and it's selling for $160/8#. I think I paid $153 back in the fall. It's still $20/pound in bulk. It's true that some of the less costly flake powders are out of stock, but I wouldn't say a person can't make good buys at the moment.

I have seen bulk primers frequently out of stock, but there is some availability online. Midsouth has a variety of primers for $0.03 each or 4 cents for match. I bought a few years worth by the end of the fall.

I shoot .38/.357 and it's true Berry's plated bullets are out of stock at Midway, but RMR has more than 50,000 bullets available in the caliber at prices as low as $0.095/ea) Those might have been fool's prices thirty years ago when the dollar was worth more, but that's not a bad price today, crisis or no crisis. It looks like a lot of their 9mm are on backorder, but I don't see any price gouging. People just bought them up because they're selling for like 7 cents each -- and you can still get that price on back order.

I'm not so cynical, yet.
 
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