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.22lr availability

Discussion in 'Tilted Weaponry' started by Borla, Feb 4, 2014.

  1. Borla

    Borla Moderator Staff Member

    Any gun person knows how insane ammo prices have been for a while. The stupidest one IMO has been the .22lr craze, and all the whackos that have been hoarding it like it is gold.


    Two good signs in the past week.

    1) I was driving through a small town in western IL and happened to pass a gun shop that had a sign at the street saying ".22LR in stock!". So I stopped just to check out the price and what they had. It was all match grade stuff, but they actually had it in stock. I haven't seen .22lr in stock in probably 18 months or longer. It was $10/50, so it was high, but he had maybe 2000 rounds of it. I took that as a good sign.


    2) Today Cabela's website has Federal Champion boxes of 525 rounds for $23 + shipping. It's been up on their site almost all day and they still aren't sold out. I'm guessing they've probably moved 10s of thousands of rounds (or more) by now since it hit SlickDeals about 4 hours ago.


    Maybe some sort of sanity is returning.

    I was fortunate enough that I had 3-4 bricks of .22lr before it went nuts. I'm guessing we aren't getting back to that $15/550 range ever again, but at least $23/525 isn't awful.

    I still can't figure out what some of those guys are going to do with 30k rounds of .22lr....
     
  2. Chris Noyb

    Chris Noyb Get in, buckle up, hang on, & be quiet.

    Location:
    Large City, TX
    The last time that I bought .22LR you get a brick of CCI for about $15.00, sometimes even cheaper on sale. I like .22, it's the cheapest plinking round that I know of.
     
  3. Borla

    Borla Moderator Staff Member



    Well, I'm assuming you have an idea of what's happened to it the last year or two. It's just been stupid and insane.


    Hopefully the Cabela's sale today is a sign of at least some return to sanity.
     
  4. Chris Noyb

    Chris Noyb Get in, buckle up, hang on, & be quiet.

    Location:
    Large City, TX
    I recall a couple of the large chain stores with sporting goods departments (Wal-Mart & Academy come to mind) having signs posted listing the ammo they didn't have in stock. Carter's Country is THE gun store in the greater Houston area (several locations, one fairly close to me) and they somehow managed to keep most popular rounds in stock, but at premium prices.
     
  5. Borla

    Borla Moderator Staff Member



    If they kept .22lr in stock they did much better than any place I know of. I've heard tales from friends all over the country about what happens at most Walmarts and big sporting goods stores, or what has happened for the last year or 18 months. There is one day a week that shipments come in. All the retired guys will hang out in the gun dept half the day and wait for the goods to be put away. Pawn shops will send their employees down to do the same. As soon as the .22lr is stocked, they will snatch it all up. The old guys hoard it or sell it on Backpage. The pawn shop employees take it to the store where it is resold for stupid amounts of money.

    I get wanting a decent stash of your own for shooting. Before the craze I had maybe 1300-1500 rounds of .22lr because it was cheap and easy to shoot a lot of. But I don't understand what these guys with tens of thousands of rounds think they are going to do with it. A buddy's cousin has something like 35k rounds and acts like it is going to be a life saver for him. Does he literally expect to be attacked by zombiesquirrels at some point? :p
     
  6. Chris Noyb

    Chris Noyb Get in, buckle up, hang on, & be quiet.

    Location:
    Large City, TX
    A .22 would have no affect on zombiesquirrels, especially if they're protective mothers. :D

    Some of the stores around here would limit the amount of ammo one person could buy. Of course that was much like concert ticket limitations, folks found a way around it.

    35K rounds of .22LR? Maybe your buddy's cousin has seen &/or read The Road.
     
  7. ChrisJericho

    ChrisJericho Careless whisper

    Location:
    Fraggle Rock
    I bought "a lot" of .22lr a few years ago and I don't even own a .22 gun. I just knew someday it would probably be scarce or a lot more expensive.

    I kept the packing slip, it was 2.9 cents a round shipped to my house for Federal .22lr and I still have all of it :)
     
  8. Borla

    Borla Moderator Staff Member



    So what is your long term plan for it?

    I'd think the peak time to sell has already passed, no?
     
  9. ChrisJericho

    ChrisJericho Careless whisper

    Location:
    Fraggle Rock
    I probably wouldn't sell it. I enjoy having it, like an old senile man who has a collection of classic cars which he never drives.
     
    • Like Like x 1
  10. I'm a range safety officer for my university's pistol club. We provide ammo for (re)sale, and we've been having a bitch of a time trying to find .22lr in particular (.9mm was also impossible to find for a time, but not nearly as bad) and as a result when we do find it we have to charge more. Not good for any parties involved.

    We're able to purchase it a bit more easily now, but I sincerely hope that we can return to the pre-most-recent-scare days of being able to buy 525 rounds of relatively-not-crappy .22lr for around (or less than) $20. Then I might actually splurge on that 10-22 plinker that I've been wanting for about a year.
     
  11. Chris Noyb

    Chris Noyb Get in, buckle up, hang on, & be quiet.

    Location:
    Large City, TX
    You should consider getting a decent .22 (pistol, rifle, maybe both) and enjoy some relatively inexpensive shooting. I haven't bought a new gun in over 20 years, but I sort of follow the sales ads, here a decent .22 semi-auto pistol can be had for $250.00.
     
  12. omega

    omega Very Tilted

    Well I finally found some 38 special +p semi jacketed hollowpoints. I had not seen those by Remington in maybe a year. So I bought three boxes of fifty for $20 a box. This was just after I bought some Hornady self defense rounds for almost a dollar a round. But I wanted to turn over my off duty carry rounds. The ones in a speedloader especially take a beating in my pocket.
     
  13. scout

    scout New Member

    I never understood the whole ammo hording thing. If the shit hits the fan badly enough that you need 35000 rounds of 22 to survive there will be plenty of ammo and guns lying around on the ground waiting on someone to pick'em up and wipe the blood off.
     
    • Like Like x 1
  14. omega

    omega Very Tilted

    Yeah but for the zombie apocalypse a 22 is almost perfect. You just need a head shot. Get up on a high spot and you can place round after round. You can carry hundreds of rounds in your pocket. A 22 pistol has very little recoil, so if you don't punch zed's ticket with first shot, you can have a quick followup.
     
  15. Borla

    Borla Moderator Staff Member

    I finally saw some .22lr in person last week. One of the larger gun stores here had it for $35/brick. I still have several hundred rounds, so I didn't buy any. I almost did just because it is the first non-match grade .22lr I've seen in a couple of years, and eventually I'm going to run out. I have zero need for more than 1000-1500 rounds in hand at a time, but I kind of like having about that in my gun cabinet. This store is notorious for having higher than average prices, so maybe I'll start running into some for a more reasonable price soon.

    I'm kind of interested if anyone else has seen more on the shelves lately? If so, what are you seeing it priced at?
     
  16. Chris Noyb

    Chris Noyb Get in, buckle up, hang on, & be quiet.

    Location:
    Large City, TX
    This is barely related to .22 ammo, but on Sunday I discovered that a small True Value hardware store near me sells ammo. We've lived in the neighborhood for over 25 years.
     
  17. Borla

    Borla Moderator Staff Member



    More and more hardware stores around here are adding hunting licenses, ammo, and loading supplies to their product offerings.

    If I shot more, I'd look at reloading. I just don't shoot my big guns enough to bother.