Received some old ammo - safe to shoot?

[briandg]

Collectible is not the same as sellable. People who collect this stuff generally haunt auctions and flea markets,places where they may find things to cheaply add to the "hoard." The probability that you will sell that ammo at a price that's worth the effort is awfully small. If you sell the .38 it's probably going to be used, even though it's easy to find loaded ammo anyway.

Myself, no, I wouldn't fire the stuff for various reasons. First, I never fire another guy's hand loads. I'd get rid of the .357.

I'd put the old .22 on my own shelf, I collect some. Why would I fire old, unknown ammo, when I want every shot I fire to be perfect? The boxes are kinda neat, but nothing special.

Imo, that .32 ammo is valueless. The box is stained and the ammo can be found anywhere online. You can probably walk into a store in your hometown and find it. Some places online it can be had for fifty cents a round.

When I tried to sell on gunbroker, there was so much garbage on there in permanent residency that nobody even viewed the things I posted.

I posted a genuine vintage US army training manual for a Thompson mg. Seventy pages or so, full manual. Excellent condition, it was probably unread, dated to WWI. Nobody even looked.

[Mike Irwin]

Sometime in the early 1980s a friend and I ran a bunch of .56-56 Spencer through his Dad's Spencer.

His Grandfather had apparently purchase it, and the ammo, surplus in the 1920s. I'm assuming that he bought it from Bannerman's, or from someone who had a shipment in from Bannerman's.

His Grandfather had apparently bought most of a case of ammunition, because there was a lot of it (probably close to 300 rounds) packaged loose in pasteboard boxes.

Best as I can figure the ammo was probably post civil war era surplus and was 100+ years old when we shot it.

We ran most of it through the rifle, with maybe a 70% success rate.

LOTS of fun!

[carguychris]

Originally Posted by briandg

Collectible is not the same as sellable.

Originally Posted by briandg

When I tried to sell on gunbroker, there was so much garbage on there in permanent residency that nobody even viewed the things I posted.

Hence my recommendation to monitor GB for a little while rather than immediately posting the ammo for sale.

If there is no apparent interest in similar ammo, or it only sells for the same price as equivalent recent-production ammo, it would be more expedient to shoot it or otherwise dispose of it.

[briandg]

Yep.