When is a primer too expensive?

[Mike / Tx]

Most of the loads I produce are for hunting purposes. That said there is still trigger time involved throughout the year. I have loads that are accurate for their purposes but I still have to find the time to get out and practice with them.

For years I really didn't have a need for SR primers until recently. I had only two arms that used them, one the 30 Carbine, the other a Contender in .223 AI, neither of which I loaded in bulk. That changed when I purchased a really nice AR-15 to use on the farm for critters. It didn't take long to figure my SR primer inventory would have to be adjusted.

I recently pick up a supply of Fiocchi SR primers. Yes they cost more than my BR-2's, but they have produced excellent groups and come 1500 to a brick. I figured that they will hold me fine until things settle so the extra costs were OK due to the current situation.

[old roper]

Last time I purchase primers I was paying $24 a brick Fed 205,210,215 and case was $125 plus tax. Match primers cost little more. I purchased primers at gun show so everyone had chance to buy at that price.

I belong to couple private gun clubs and never know there was shortage.

[Metal god]

Last time I purchase primers I was paying $24 a brick Fed 205,210,215 and case was $125 plus tax. Match primers cost little more. I purchased primers at gun show so everyone had chance to buy at that price.

That ^^^

However I'm in San Diego where they banned gunshows on state property so we no longer have a gun show here . Add to that local primer prices are high and I've not bought primers for several years . I'm now low-ish on LPP and will likely be spending $100 a brick here some time soon . These will be for 45acp and 44mag . It will be worth it for the 44mag but not so much for the 45acp . In this case I will only except paying that much for Winchester large pistol primers because I can use them in both , which I already do .

I'm gtg with everything else and the only reason I'm low-ish (4k) on LPP is I sold some to friends (3k) when times were really bad thinking the prices and availability would have changed by now . Guess it's time to throw out my crystal ball .

[old roper]

Metal god, I was born Oakland Calif and raised SF. I can remember when Alioto wanted to engraved new serial # on rifles. Only in Calif glad we move to Co.

[Schlitz 45]

I recently made the decision to reload for the one caliber that I’ve been putting off-308 Win.
Thought it would be a good idea to have 100% coverage of all my calibers but this is the only large rifle primer cartridge in the family & I ended up overpaying in order to get started spending the most I’ve ever spent for primers. I’m not worried about the few pennies a piece extra as they’ll last me the rest of my life. These will be hunting rounds that I won’t go through many once I get my recipe figured out & the enjoyment of the process is priceless to me.

[5whiskey]

Primers have almost tripled in price, that's not a new normal, that's supply being kept artificially low when it's obvious that the demand for primers isn't going to suddenly disappear, which the industry is predicting because we've seen waves like this for the last 15 years. Apparently the only way the wave of demand stops is if there isn't a Democrat President.

The boom/bust cycle in the gun industry is part of our problem. Consumers have been burned by high prices and shortages all too often. But then manufacturers and suppliers have been burned by expanding production to meet demand before and all of a sudden the demand dissipates. I do think manufacturers and larger suppliers have an incentive for higher demand and higher prices. I do not think there is a vast conspiracy of withholding primers from the market to continue the current price trend. I DO think that there are manufacturers who are doing cost/benefit analysis and realize that expanding production will reduce prices. Ask yourself what is safer and easier. Continue to produce 1 billion primers per year and make a profit margin of $.02 per primer; or invest millions in a new factory to expand production to 2 billion primers per year, and the increased supply lowers prices such that the profit margin is $.01 per primer?

Based on that simple economics, it is an easy question to answer. Why take the risk of spending millions on expansion to make the same total profits? It's more nuanced than that. It's possible that this current "peak demand" is the new normal. In that case, if current demand holds even after there is a Republican president then it would make more sense to expand. Sure increasing supply will decrease prices some, but probably not drastically if our demand is at a new normal. But there is also the threat of government regulation drastically reducing demand in the future. An ammo excise tax would hurt demand significantly. Then manufacturers would be holding the bag. I actually wouldn't want to make some of these decisions as an ammo manufacturer. Lots of "what ifs." I understand why things are they are, all I can do is wish they weren't so. Lot of good that does me.

[Unclenick]

The demand increase has signs of being permanent or close to it. Based on NICS checks, in 2019, gun sales averaged 1.16 million a month. In March 2020, with Covid fears, there were 3.7 million record checks. After the George Floyd protests started, June and July saw 3.9 and 3.6 Million. I saw recently it seems to have settled in at about 2 million a month now. Vista Outdoors president Jason Vanderbrink said in one of his videos that another part of the increase was unexpectedly due to Foodies becoming hunters both to have an outdoor safe-distancing activity during Covid and to participate in the locally-sourced food movement. Apparently, their numbers turned around a multi-year decline in hunting, and he said he thinks they are now likely a permanent market addition, too, and they've made record amounts of hunting ammunition to keep them supported.

All those new guns need ammunition, and the ammo makers have added employees and shifts, and it took them a long time to be able to start keeping up. There's been a new primer maker added in Texas, but there's also been a new ammo maker added down there. So I think the shortage of primers has mainly been their diversion to ammo making in order to keep the plant shifts working and the new gun owners and users supplied. This simple market forces explanation seems likely to be the real issue, as adding the complexity of conspiracies on top of that and all the people who'd have to keep them secret while still paying inventory taxes on their stock makes it much more complicated. As Occam's Razor has it, more complicated explanations are least probable, particularly when they would have to be in addition to all the known market forces already eating up supply.

[jackstrawIII]

My apologies if someone already said this (didn't read all posts), but there is a very simple and accurate answer to this question:

When is something priced too high? When nobody is willing to pay the asking price.

If anyone is willing to pay, it's not too expensive. That's just simple economics. If we keep paying inflated primer prices, then sellers will keep selling them for more and more. It's capitalism.

[rclark]

If anyone is willing to pay, it's not too expensive. That's just simple economics. If we keep paying inflated primer prices, then sellers will keep selling them for more and more. It's capitalism.

Yep. We see the same thing with guns as well. The auction sites are a prime example there. Still buying with over-inflated pricing.... As long as this continues we won't see a decrease in prices. Not so bad for me, as I have enough primers to last me quite a few years and of course have a enough firearms as well. But for the 'new guy'.... Feel for him.

[fooey]

Whenever I have to buy them regardless of the price!! ;>)

[markr6754]

During the lock downs my wife forced me to buy primers wherever we found them. She hasn't let up now that primers are more readily available, but more expensive. My maximum purchase in 2020 was under $40, but I may have spent at least that in gasoline. We wrote it off as entertainment as that was about the only time we left the house, aside from grocery shopping. Nothing else was open.
In 2021 I paid $55 for small rifle when I could find them. Things seemed to dry up after September 2021.
In 2022, after I'd refused to buy primers at market prices I was able to pick up 5 bricks of Federal Large Pistol for $75/bk. The seller was a small manufacturer in NC who had invested in the Expansion debacle, with deliveries expected in a month or so (July 2022), which is why he sold me some of his stock. I also paid $86/bk for a case of Rem 7 1/2s, making what I thought would be the high water mark for me...but alas, adding 6.8 Rem SPC to my bench pushed me to buy 5 sleeves of Remington 9 1/2 LRP at $45.90, effectively $91.80/bk. Thankfully, I soon thereafter discovered SRP 6.8 brass, so I can use my 3c to 4.5c SRPs for loading.
So, as other have discovered, my price tolerance is greater than I thought possible just 2 years ago. While I long for lower pricing, I'm content to accept greater availability for now...when blended into my total primer supply my average cost is 5c. Time will tell how that changes in 2023.

[stuckinthe60s]

another issue is ....buyers of primers aren't buying them to use or hoard, they are flipping them, adding to the inflation of the market.

eco101...greed is good.
in the primer/gun industry, everyone is getting greedy...with no interest in shooting the stuff.
everyones trying to line their pockets to buy groceries.

[Constrictor]

Last year in june i paid $81 for 5 gallons of contact cement. YESTERDAY i paid $191. Its the new normal on primers, contact cement, eggs and everything.

[parttime]

I should have invested in small pistol primers 10 years ago instead of gold

[ocharry]

i was at grafs yesterday on my way to another place looking for powder and bullets...

but they did have cci 400 SRP for 80 bucks/1000...so i got a box of them...musta been 7-8 boxes i guess

i just opend a new sleeve and the price tag said 33.95.....the one it replaced had a tag on it the read 30.99....lol....my how times have changed

ocharry

[higgite]

To the thread subject, a primer is too expensive when it drives the cost of an assembled round higher than the cost of purchasing equivalent factory ammo. ymmv

[Unclenick]

That is probably a good general rule. Guys shooting 9 mm will reach that point first. People shooting rare obsolete rounds will probably never get there. Of course, if your gun only shoots to the potential you want to achieve with some special loading you developed, that's another matter.

[ghbucky]

I thought I overpaid at $500 for 5k primers for small pistol primers.

Then I looked up prices for ammo and found 9mm going for $.28+/rnd.

[Mike38]

I bought 4000 primers today at a local gun show. 2000 small pistol and 2000 large pistol. $380. It was very painful. Very. Add to that 1500 bullets for $165, and I'm going to have to put in some overtime at work.

[Unclenick]

Wow! $0.205/round before powder. Of course, shotgun shells have been this way for a long time. It's often the case that you can get the seasonally discounted field loads for less by the case at Wally World than you can reload them for. Perhaps the industry is hoping to bring that situation to metallic cartridges. Time will tell.

[JKP]

15 cents for primers and 6 cents for powder in 9mm? The most i spent for primers is 9 cents and powder runs about 2.5 cents a round. Coated lead costs about 7 cents in bulk plus I enjoy reloading. I too would have to take a hard look if my 9mm reloads cost 30 cents apiece.

[Unclenick]

Unless you are referring to an earlier post, something went wrong there. $380.00/4000 primers = $0.095/primer.

[JohnKSa]

My apologies if someone already said this (didn't read all posts), but there is a very simple and accurate answer to this question:

When is something priced too high? When nobody is willing to pay the asking price.

If anyone is willing to pay, it's not too expensive. That's just simple economics. If we keep paying inflated primer prices, then sellers will keep selling them for more and more. It's capitalism.

Exactly.

As long as people are buying them fast enough to keep them scarce, they are obviously not too expensive.

As long as people stay panicked when the supply is scarce and buy large quantities of them at virtually any price, the price will keep going up.

To the thread subject, a primer is too expensive when it drives the cost of an assembled round higher than the cost of purchasing equivalent factory ammo.

I think a lot of primer buyers:

1. See reloading as a hobby in itself and while they justify it as a cost saver, would reload even if the resulting product cost more than factory.

2. See the ability to reload as a hedge against TSHTF type events and/or legislative restriction and would buy the supplies to keep that hedge in place even if it's not cost effective.

Which means, IMO, that there are a significant number of buyers out there who will continue buying components even if it doesn't make good sense when viewed as a simple comparison between the cost of the reloads vs. the cost of factory ammo.

[ghbucky]

small pistol primers at $0.10/primer are a deal.

Don't believe it? Look at the price of factory 9mm. $0.28/rnd is the cheapest I see anywhere.

So, even at a dime/primer, it is still way cheaper to reload 9mm.

This is the new norm folks. Settle in.

[JKP]

Yes. Uncle Nick, I was referring to post #3. I don't know how to quote a post, but I should have been more specific.