primers

gerrycaruso

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As of this afternoon, Midway is listing sm. pistol, .50BMG and shotgun primers as in stock. Remember,they won't ship to MA.
 
Primers, Primers and more Primers

I was in A&J Sporting Goods Gun Shop Last night, they had a good supply of Primers in stock including 50BMG primers. You can contact them through thier web site www.ajsportinggoods.com. They are in Housatonic MA. When I was there there was a guy buying 4 cases of 209 primers, yes 4 cases.
 
Repeating for the sake of clarity:

To Order Primers - step by step instructions

1) Go to your local gun shop, or fav on-line place (Mass resident, you should just deal with the local gun shop)
2) Tell the owner that you want to ORDER primers
3) Before he has the chance to say that he has no idea when he will be able to get them in, you say: "And, I want to pay for them now!"
3a) If you don't pay for them now, they will most likely get sold before you get there​
4) Pay for the primers
5) Wait only about 4 weeks these days, and you will have all your primers

Notes:
  • Do not do this to buy 200 primers. Primers come in cases of 5,000. There are 100 per sleeve, 10 sleeves per box (1,000), and five boxes per case (5,000).
  • Buy as many cases of 5,000 as you can manage
  • Order with a buddy to increase total volume

It's the easy, painless way to get as many primers as you want.

One of my reloading students just did this, and he got 30,000+ primers delivered in 4 weeks! And, he called me to tell me that he's getting even more because he forgot to order one size.
 
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competive shooting sucks up primer supply, even shotguning. Heck I have been slow this year and still shot 3k rounds. norm is 8k plus I have enough for now. Been stocking up on cartridge reload supply also.
 
Unfortunately, $38.95 is probably going to be a typical shop price. I've see the prices a big dealer pays for primers, and they were within $1.00 of the price anyone in a free state could get primers for from one of the big component vendors. I speak in the past tense because the distributors are still generally out of primers. Before the crisis, the going rate was over $23/K for Winchester or Federal. Now, the rate is about $4 more for Wolf (more on them in a bit), and a couple dollars more than that for the mainstream brands. The unfortunate bottom line is that $38.95/K probably represents about a 25% profit margin +/-, which is actually on the low side for a gunshop product that sells in the $40 price range (margins on guns tend to be lower).

Many retail products have very tightly controlled distribution channels and you won't get any where near a dealer price list unless you are in the business (just try getting a dealer price list for current production bicycles, Oakley glasses, SureFire lights or Levis) making it easy to get substantial margins. The industry control on dealer pricing for reloading components is pretty much non-existent, which can make things difficult for a shop since the benchmark "good price" everyone uses as a comparison is the shop's cost.

Primers are still tight - they show up from time to time, but if it's a mail order vendor (many of which wont ship to MA), supplies tend to dry up within a day or there is a quantity limit (which means $22.50 hazmat spread across a small quantity of primers).

The one exception is Wolf primers that have become available in quantity through multiple reputable on-line vendors. I've been using Wolf Small Rifle in my 40 S&W (I have always used Small Rifle since I also load for 38 super and prefer a thicker cup) and have had no difficulty with loading them in my 1050 and reliability has been excellent. Price (prior to hazmat and shipping) is in the $25-$28/K range depending on vendor. I believe Wolf primers are the same ones that were being sold under the PMC name, and are the product of the Murom Apparatus Producing Plant (http://flame.murom.ru). The individual boxes of Wolf primers have typical retail packaging, but the cases of 5 in which these boxes come have complete contact info for Murom, so I am certain they are the manufacturer.

The other issue is price increases. Every time there is a reloading component shortage, products are invariably a bit pricier once the shortage eases. Prior to the first great primer famine (back around 1992), the price of primers was below $20/K. Nobody offered pricing at that level once the shortage eased. As guru Bane mentioned http://michaelbane.blogspot.com, once we see general availability of product it is going to be at the "new normal". Shortages also push up prices during the shortage and vendors tend not to drop prices after the shortage eases as long as they are still able to move the goods (notice how the bullet vendors did not drop prices when the cost of lead and copper crashes).

In other words, BOHICA.
 
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Riley's (last Friday) had Rem 7 1/2. $38.95! Ouch! The retailers are enjoying the demand big time.
The only other primers they had were small pistol magnums.

Not more than a month or so ago they had a (relative) assload of CCI primers, and they were all going for $35 a box at that point, still with a ration. I guess they've been flushed out again.

-Mike
 
Yesterday I got Wolf large pistol primers for $33.00 a 1000 after the shipping costs.

Last week I paid $38.95 for Remington large pistol primers. The gun shop owner told me that Remington were the most expensize primers but they were the only one's he was sent and he never know's what he's going to get, until he unpacks his weekly order.

I got 2000 Federal small pistol primers for $35.00 a 1000 two weeks ago and they were the last ones in the store and that was all they had.

A month ago I paid $40 a 1000 for small rifle primers and I was lucky to get them, the owner told me that he doubted that he would get any more because he was such a small store.

What's starting to really bother me is the fact that some cast bullet companies are limiting their orders to 2000 rounds and are starting to go way up in price. Lately I've seen prices as high as as $107.00 per 1000 for 45acp 200gr swc's.
 
Actually, they did. When the price of lead was sky high (China was consuming 45% of the worlds production of lead. They were buying to build gov't stockpiles), what places like berry's did was add in a "surcharge" to the regular price of bullets. When the price of lead went back down, they dropped the surcharge.

(notice how the bullet vendors did not drop prices when the cost of lead and copper crashes).
 
Rileys has lots of every type of primer, with a 1000 primer limit per customer. I picked up 1000 CCI small rifle primers today for $35.55.
 
I was in A&J Sporting Goods Gun Shop Last night, they had a good supply of Primers in stock including 50BMG primers. You can contact them through thier web site www.ajsportinggoods.com. They are in Housatonic MA. When I was there there was a guy buying 4 cases of 209 primers, yes 4 cases.

Yes, they still have lots of primers on the shelf as of last evening:

AJPrimers.jpg
 
I was @ A&J Sporting Goods Last Night. They had just taken a delivery of about 30 cases of W209 Primers. I even seen some Remington 2 1/2's.

They had an Armalite AR30 338 Lapua there..... Wat a sweet gun... There had to be 100 tatical guns...
 
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