[Unclenick]

All that equipment you've bought has to have its value amortized over all the rounds it does in its service life. If you load another 1000 rounds tomorrow, you just cut all that investment overhead in half on a per-round basis. So it tends to get cheaper over time if you keep using it. If you stop loading and shooting, then the loss of income from the fact you don't have the money tied up in bonds or some other investment comes back to bite you. So, e-bay or otherwise recover whatever you can from what you stop using.

Another point is, as suggested above, if you are doing everything right, your ammo should be better quality and better matched to your gun than what you can buy on the cheap. So it's like getting better grade at below cheap ammo prices.

Finally, owing to the shortages that are just starting to ease, prices have been high. I expect you'll see them come back down a soon as all the pipelines are filled again and people have to compete on price for customers again. My last .223 short range loads cost about $210 in supplies to make a thousand, but that was with match bullets and primers at pre-shortage component prices.