What was the last extinct caliber?

[Eric F]

To qualify it can not be a "experimental" round(9x23 or other wild cat rounds). It has to be a round that many guns were manufactured for, and are still around in numbers today.
For example: Remington mod 8 and 81 lots of those guns still around, but 30 remington is no longer made.....ectinct.
Surly there is a diffrent round that went extinct since then.

 

[.338-06]

.41 ae

 

[olafhardtB]

9 mm federal, 307 and 356 winchester, 7/30 waters, maybe some of the short magnums, 6.5 remington magnum, 8 mm remington ultra, 22 jet, 256 win etc the woods is full of them. They will probably be joined by the rimfire 17's, 308,338, 450marlins etc.

 

[Deus Machina]

.41 AE (supplanted by .40 S&W) or some of the super short magnums are probably the most recent. .17 Mach 2 is getting increasingly rare, as well as 5mm despite a short apparent resurgence.

They will probably be joined by the rimfire 17's, 308,338, 450marlins etc.

450 and the .17's, maybe--I think .17 HMR will stick around, though--but .338 and .308? Maybe .338, if the military stops its use, but .308 has been one of the most common full-power rifle rounds for not much less than a century now, and I don't foresee it leaving up until something better than smokeless powder comes along.

 

[pikid89]

olafhardtB is referring to the proprietary .308 & .338 Marlin Express calibers, a joint attempt by Marlin and Hornady to build a lever rifle that could match the ballistics and power of the .308 Win, and the .338 ME to the .30-06

as for the .450 Marlin, that was just a modernized 45-70, based on a .45 caliber wildcat

 

[mortablunt]

41 Magnum/ 41 Action Express
It was before my time, so I'm a bit hazy.
Also, 6.5 Grendel.

 

[Sam1911]

It seems the OP is asking about which cartridges have died out -- not which ones you speculate might die out.

I don't think fans of the 7-30 Waters, or certainly of the 6.5 Grendel would agree that they've perished from the earth just yet.

There are plenty of cartriges like the .30 Remington, or the .401 Winchester which have more or less completely gone away.

Sort of.

With the increase in diversity in the reloading world these days, most obsolete calibers still live on in the hearts of their fans. Heck, I'm looking at buying a rolling block Remington in .430 Spanish. Blackpowder cartridges like that sort of define the concept of an extict cartridge, but they certainly are still popular!

(And, some of the evolutionary dead ends seem to show up in the darnedest places. The .30 Remington was used as the parent case for the 6.8 SPC. The .221 Fireball is the actual parent case for the .300 Whisper and clones.)

Places like Old Western Scrounger and RTG offer a more complete list of REAL hard to find stuff than you probably ever knew existed.

Check out RTGs list: http://www.rtgammo.com/obsolamm.html

Play around on OWS's pages for some real mystery numbers: http://ows-ammo.com/store/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=58

The only ones I trust to be really dead are the various large-caliber rimfires. .25 RF, .32 RF, .41 RF, etc. No one's making them and they can't be reloaded. That's about as extinct as it can get.

 

[USAF_Vet]

Is the .222 Remington magnum still being made?

 

[Larry Ashcraft]

They will probably be joined by the rimfire 17's

I doubt that, especially the 17HMR, which has been going strong for several years now. The little cartridge is very handy.

 

[Loosedhorse]

.41 AE was my first impression, too.

 

[Dr.Rob]

They were giving away WSM chambered rifles on CDNN, I suspect those will have a future of getting rechambered.

 

[LJ-MosinFreak-Buck]

I know .25 Stevens (Savage) one of the two. It was in Gun Digest.

 

[splithoof]

What about the .45 Winchester Magnum?

 

[Ole Humpback]

22 Short??? I've not found ammo for one made after about the mid 60's.

 

[1911fan]

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the 9x23 the .38 Super?

Just checking...

ed

 

[JEB]

22 Short??? I've not found ammo for one made after about the mid 60's.

not gone yet. the wall mart down the street still carries it.

 

[Sam Cade]

22 Short??? I've not found ammo for one made after about the mid 60's.

Nah. It's still kickin'.

http://www.northamericanarms.com/firearms/s/s.html

http://www.cheaperthandirt.com/64518-5.html

 

[Larry Ashcraft]

Yeah, 22 short is still around, just pricey and kind of hard to find. I use it in my granddad's Winchester 1890 once in a while. It's shorts only, and with a 26 inch barrel is almost silent.

 

[Jim Watson]

I don't think you can get a new factory rifle for 8mm Remington, can you?

And, some of the evolutionary dead ends seem to show up in the darnedest places. The .30 Remington was used as the parent case for the 6.8 SPC.

History/trivia. About 1950, Mike Walker et al at Remington considered basing their new .22 centerfire on the .30 Remington. They concluded that the casehead web was too thin for the pressures and brought out an all new case, calling it the .222 Remington. It seems to me that it would have been simpler and cost less to just tweak the .30 Rem basic draw piece to beef it up. We would then have had a rimless .219 Zipper or Wasp, which would have put performance above the .222 Magnum and pushing the .22-250 pretty hard. If that, they would probably not have bothered to commercialize the .22-250.

 

[303tom]

If you are like me, ain`t none of em extinct, Im a reloader.

 

[9mmepiphany]

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the 9x23 the .38 Super?

Just checking...

ed

Nope, related but different. One is semi-rimmed, the other isn't

 

[wlewisiii]

I picked up a copy of Cartridges of the World the other day. That's another way to learn all about what is and isn't extinct.

 

[W.E.G.]

.327 Federal next to join the ranks of the deceased.

 

[writerinmo]

Buddy of mine emailed me a couple weeks ago, excited about a H&R revolver he acquired, chambered in .38 rimfire. Hated to tell him he's more than likely never going to get to shoot it unless he gets lucky at a gun show.

 

[csa77]

7mm nambu, but there where only ~7500 baby nambus ever made, dunno if the production makes it too rare to count.

last time I saw original ammo being sold it was going for 55$ a round.