On impulse I stopped at cabelas yesterday shelves were mainly stocked with 12ga but noticed a few employees stocking one opened a the last cases of 150 round bricks of 223 I grabbed a box. He didn't know the price but I took one anyway. They also had every caliber I needed except 308.
The 150 rounds 223 was $60 Herters FMJ. Steep but with the supply and demand I still bought it

Nice!

I have a bunch of 55 gr soft points I need to load, probably have a few thousand cases prepped and primed, just need to set up the loader and powder dropper. Everything is expensive today.

I bought stuff to reload 45 acp last week, then realized reloading is more expensive than buying new! At least I do have the stuff when ammo becomes tight.
Bought a box of Blazer CCi ammo with a new gun and they are aluminum casing. Worthless as teats on a tomcat.

Federal cartridges come with small primers while other casings take large primers. Anything to make things difficult!

yes and no

if your trying to make ball ammo for practice buying fmj and load it , yes it costs equal or more because the manufacture makes it in such quantity that the mark up on the powder , the primer and the projectile are equal too or greater than the markup on the laoded ammo.


if you start talking hollow points or hunting ammo that changes some

I started reloading with 44mag because I could buy a hundred Hornady XTP bullets for 25 dollars , 3 dollars for 100 primers and 16 dollars for a pound of powder 44 dollars and I could make 100 rounds and have powder left to make 400 more

a hundred was really costing me 33 dollars to load

a box of 50 rounds loaded at the store was 40 dollars

it was costing me 16.50 a box of 50 to load hunting ammo these were 2011 prices but both have gone up the components and the loaded ammo


there can be saving to be had in loading target ammo in 9 and 45

http://www.acmebullet.com/Acme-Bullet/45-ACP-Lead-Bullets/45ACP-230RN-NLG-Coated

Acme hi-tech coated bullets 500 bullets for 58.50 comes to 11.7 cents a projectile , figure pistol powder is up to about 20 dollars a pound round and sat 7gr per round you get 1000 rounds per pound last I saw large pistol primers they were 42 dollars a thousand.
11.7 cents + 2 cents + 4.2 cents = 17.9 cents per round on a sale you can't buy 230gr 45acp for 9 dollars a box of 50

in 9mm I run 124gr acme the bullet runs 7.4 cents each 1.4 cents in powder and I had been getting primers for 3.3 cents that will go up I am sure 12.1 cents a round or just a bit over 6 dollars a box

if like most reloaders you then shoot 3x as much the savings will be absorbed

the Acme hi-teck coated bullets run through a Glock just fine I have shot thousands of them with never any leading or issue.

however at this time all components and ammo are in very very short supply and that will mess with prices

I don't use fmj

Looking for clarification since these are two separate posts. Are you saying that Federal 45 acp is loaded with small pistol primers as opposed to other brands?
Is there any other calibers that have uncharacteristic primers based on brand?

I wish I was reloading. My avg price per box was $32 for 20 rounds. That was the cheapest priced ammo on the shelves for 270, 300 WM, 308 none of it was fmj. I also picked up 17hmr for $14. The total was scary.

I was surprised cabelas even had pistol calibers on shelves but I got plenty for now. They are now limiting 9,45, 5.56, .223 to 5 boxes per day. Sportsman's is limiting 2 boxes per customer per day except for shotgun ammo that's limited to 1 case

Speer and Federal load Small Pistol primer 45acp

by the way Speer and Federal are both manufactured by ATK both brands owned by Vista Outdoors along with CCI , American eagle , estate, and independence ammo

it is inconvenient for progressive press reloaders

however as a manufacturing process I can definitely see why they do it , think of the tooling changes to go between large and small

also the stock and supply chain issues it could resolve.

if all your 380acp,9mm,357 sig ,40S&W,45gap,45acp all use Small Pistol primers one thing to stock and no one accidentally loads smalls in a large or large in a small machine

Aluminum cases are non re-loadable and I think that was the comment on that but not sure.

Federal is the only one I've seen yet with small primer, but there could be others.

10mm is also another caliber that you'll find brass with either a small or large primers. I know blazers ball ammo is small primers..