I hope you all well in this endeavor.
I did not write the below directing this towards any member, seller etc but just recounting past experiences and personal opinion.
In the early 2000's I started reloading seriously when I got hooked on sporting clay. The internet was a great resource for all sorts of information, sales, access to seasoned reloaders passing on their knowledge etc.
I purchased manuals, scale, PW 800+ press, case of wads, powder, hulls, primers but #7,#8 or #9 lead shot was unobtainable. In hindsight I should have asked the seasoned reloaders why they had a little bug in the posts quoting the spot price of lead.
The price of lead shot went from less than $20 to over $75 per bag. Rumor had it that the newly emerging middle class in China were buying cars and the lead was need for car batteries, militaries throughout the world were stock piling ammo especially China and the EV cars were using it for batteries. It was a perfect storm and lead shot was expensive and hard to obtain even if you had the cash.
So out of north Florida came Joe, I forget his real name, who had the great idea to mine the range to reclaim shot. Reclaiming shot and making it shootable was a bit more difficult then he imagined but reclaiming the lead and redropping into shot was not very difficult.
Joe would post a few times a week with pictures of the family and him out at the range mining lead, sifting the dirt and their 10-20 5 gal buckets of lead for a hard days work. He would pose questions to the forum of how do you do x or y etc. He was a very entertaining eloquent writer.
After about a month he decided he was going to make a go at a small business redropping reclaimed lead into shot. He had a business plan, his wife was going to start sewing shot bags and the his kids also had after school jobs with the business. When he offered his shot for sale its was a third to a half off the going price. Member who purchased the shot posted picture of the shot and the handmade bags made from jean material. For the forum members it was too good to be true.
Members of the forum were ordering shot by the ton, yes 2000 lbs. Joe was elated that his small business was taking off but he had way too many orders then he could fulfill with the current. Joe had to expand. Expansion was easier said than done. He had to research machines, move out of the garage and hire an employee or two. The big problem was seed money.
To get seed money for equipment Joe started a yearly prepaid shot subscription service where he would deliver x bags of shot each month. Some forum members were actually able to invest in the business itself. Updates to the forum showing the new digs and equipment. Highlights of success and failures.
For the first few months everyone was receiving their lead, weekly updates to the forum and then nothing. Joe had a health problem which stopped all operations. Joe could not reply to the forum himself but his wife did after about a month hiatus.
I could go on with the story but the punch line is there were never any kids, wife, equipment, lead etc.
This was my first and last component shortage. This start me on off on building an inventory of components and factory ammo which would last me 2 to 3 years. It took me a number of years to get there but I never ran out of anything I needed.
Just ask yourself why someone would invest $450k to gross $900k when the market could easily handle twice that.
Why do we only see this on THR and not AR15, snipperhide etc. Well kept internet secret?
Its funny the ease people have to shunt the risk to the credit card companies if this goes south. Now that directly impacts me with increased rates, fees etc. I guess the way I look at it.
