308 SO much cheaper?!!

[BigShep85]

I went to walmart today an stopped by the ammo section just to enjoy the sight of ammo on the shelves and while I was looking I found somethin that surprised me.
They had 6mm which I am going to be picking up soon but it was $31.50 a box (20)
While the 308 was under 20 bucks
What is the deal?
Other places they run close to the same price and i was surprised to see this difference

 

[bpl]

IME, the cheapest "deer rifle" ammo is 30-30 and then for a bit more are .243, .308, .270 and 30-06, which generally cost about the same. Any of the less common cartridges are generally more costly.

 

[MattShlock]

Unpopular rounds not as necessary as common ones overall for the shooting public and they are cranking out what they can. Tooling is expensive, time, production, money and fewer happy customers by one measure. They are probably making the minimum amount of oddball calibers to satisfy as many diehard "different" calibers shooters as possible, but that's it and you're going to pay a premium.

 

[Reloadron]

Typically a box of Winchester Super-X Ammunition 6mm Remington 100 Grain Power-Point Box of 20 runs about 30 bucks.

Typically a box of Winchester USA Ammunition 7.62x51mm NATO 147 Grain Full Metal Jacket runs about 20 bucks.

However, they are far from the same for comparison purposes. Cheap bulk 308 Win can hardly be compared to the initially listed 6mm ammunition. Now if I went with for example Federal Premium Gold Medal Ammunition 308 Winchester 168 Grain Sierra MatchKing Hollow Point Boat Tail I would see the price difference is not that great.

Additionally there is likely a heck of a lot more 308 ammunition manufactured than the 6mm flavors.

Just My Take
Ron

 

[Zoogster]

Before and a little after the incident last December some decent quality .308 was generally around $20 a box or a dollar a round. Some bulk stuff would be cheaper at 75 cents a round or less. If you were patient for deals on cheap plinking stuff you could get under 50 cents a round.

Some decent hunting or defensive loads with quality expanding rounds with good energy loads would go on sale for $20-25 sometimes.


.308 is very common, everyone is tooled up to make it, and they make it in large quantities. In good times this means more price competition. So when everyone is not buying it up as quickly as they can then they start competing and trying to offload varieties of it.

When you get into less common rounds there is less competition and you pay extra just for it being stocked at all. It doesn't have to be an uncommon round, few things will be as common as NATO calibers in the USA.
The quantites of .223/5.56x45 .308/7.62x51 made are substantial, you have military overrun and other things making competition on the cheaper side even higher. Sometimes the cost of purchasing completed rounds can be similar to the cost of the components and assembling your own.
They get that cheap.
Military rounds would be even cheaper if not for all the import restrictions we have which restrict a lot of rifle rounds as armor piercing handgun rounds. Which in turn makes a lot of the available cheap surplus in the world unavailable to US citizens. Surplus would often be cheaper than selling new ammunition at cost would be.

 

[rodregier]

To be fair, you do have to compare ammunition with similar projectiles.

At a handloading or mfgr level, FMJ projectiles are significantly less expensive than a decent expanding hunting projectile. The premium hunting projectiles command an even larger premium.

Military contract overruns (typically FMJ) will also be cheaper than "purpose built" ammunition that was intended for commercial channels from the beginning.

So, for example from Midway:

http://www.midwayusa.com/product/368114/prvi-partizan-ammunition-308-winchester-145-grain-full-metal-jacket-box-of-20 - $15/20 (FMJ)

http://www.midwayusa.com/product/218202/hornady-american-whitetail-ammunition-308-winchester-150-grain-interlock-spire-point-box-of-20 - $21/20 (simple SP)

http://www.midwayusa.com/product/260876/barnes-vor-tx-ammunition-308-winchester-168-grain-tipped-triple-shock-x-bullet-boat-tail-lead-free-box-of-20 - $41/20 (premium projectile)