Since the election, reloading supplies that had disappeared for YEARS suddenly show up in mass on retailer's shelves. Now you can find any caliber of brass, all the .22LR you can shoot, and almost any powder you may need, even pistol powders, are showing up in quantity. I would say the drought is over. Did the election of Donald Trump cause this glut of formerly unobtainable items to appear at stores within 2 weeks as the hoarders relaxed a bit, or was it something else?

Yesterday at my local whorehouse as an example.....and ALL brands of powder that had been missing for a long long time was stocked full.

I look forward to some time without politically motivated market influence.

Yeah, it would be nice to not have to budget "what if I step into a store and actually find large primers today?"

Now that I have 10,000 primers and 50 lbs if powder. Better get a few more!!

Also in the news-

Interplanetary relationships change by 20% in preparation for Trump presidency.

I took a walk through the new Gander Mountain in town last weekend. They had 22lr overflowing from numerous display shelves. Makes you wonder where it's all been for so long.

More likely to wonder just which Government Department had the leash on and which set of orders allowed it.

You lot did a lot more than just get rid of a thieving bitch.

Local Academy has a whole endcap of .22's. Also has a bit of powder and a few primers. Life is good without the thrice-accursed liberal at the helm.

Dems are no friends of the shooting sports and I'm sure they did all they could to mess things up the last 8 years. What they didn't mess up the hoarders and gougers took care of. Looking forward to more normal supplies and more realistic prices.

ar15 stuff will fall real soon. PSA has uppers for 199 and bcg & charging handle for 79.00.

Not seeing it here. The powders and primers have been quite available for several months. Strolled through for a look Monday, and it looks the same. .22lr has been readily available for a while, but primarily expensive target grade stuff (Norma) and Aguila round nose loads. Still have not seen any of the bulk HVHP stuff that I prefer for the field on the shelves.

Curiously...the 9mm HP I've been getting for a long time now along was completely cleaned out. Plenty of 9mm ball. Plenty of HP in .38, .357, .40, .45acp, and even 10mm - but zero 9mm. Huh?

its over when I see Alliant Powder products readily available and still have seen no glut of 22 LR out here locally or up in Potland...or Eugene where Cabelas are at...

The 22 LR I have seen, costs as much for 50, as I use to pay for a box of 550 Federals at Wally World...

The only powder I've been having trouble finding is H4350. Seems like the rest of the stuff I use has been readily available for awhile.

Makes you wonder how the supplies can appear so quickly.

The situation has been slowly improving around here for at least a year. I don't think anything has changed on the supply end in the three weeks since the election. I made the decision to increase my stockpile well before the election and had everything I wanted (except a couple 8-pounders of Unique) by this past spring. I'm sure there are guys out there on a tight budget who were still trying to lay in supplies right up to Election Day. They would buy a pound of powder or a brick of primers from their local stores whenever they had a little money left over after the bills. That is what has changed - the pressure to buy 'just in case' is gone. When the rate that supplies are leaving the stores drops drastically, it may appear that supply has all the sudden increased.

They've been hidden in the basement in hopes a pound of powder would bring $50.




Dave

Haven't been by the place where I get most of my powder, primers, etc. lately but today I noticed that the local Wal-Mart seems to ALWAYS have 22LR, 22WMR, and even 22 shorts in stock. The shelves used to be bare every time I was there or they only had stuff for about a day or two. Haven't run out of anything but there's some stuff I should be replenishing in the near future.

Gun store guy told me last year that in a conference call with distributors they had talked about the industry gearing up and stockpiling for a run after Hillary was elected. The sudden appearance of long absent items would seem to lend credence to that.

I will believe it is over when I can find H-4350 on the shelf regularly. That is the one that has been the worst to try and find.

I have bought 2 8 pound jugs of Varget over the last few weeks......and found primers for reasonable prices......seeing lots and lots of 22 ammo around here for $.05 a round...............I am pretty good now for a while, just need to bulk order a few bullets and Ill be good for a while.......

From following these types of threads....

I've seen patterns, that make one thing there is also local distribution patterns....


Guys can't find one powder in one part of the country... and yet other parts of the country have plenty of it on the shelves....

others can't find primers, or certain types when other parts have plenty of primers and selection...

Some one above just mentioned seeing plenty of 22LR, 22 Mag etc at their local Walmart recently.... that was in Western NY of all places.... yet here in Southern Oregon, 22 LR is about as common as dodo eggs...

America is great again...

Almost nobody I hunt/shoot with buys primers by the 100 or powder by the 1lb canister anymore. Minimum 1K primers at a time and 5-8# kegs of powder instead of 1# containers. Shortages in '08-'10 and '12-current have exponentially more people buying every component in far larger quantity than they ever used to.

'Course I know more than a few whom are also still using primers they bought in the mid-late 90's during the Bill Clinton "Make primers inert after 2-3 yrs scare".

Anyone seeing GM215M's?

LGS got 30 bricks in Mid-Oct, they were $70/1k and lasted almost 2wks.

We have the same affliction!

I see complete lowers for $149.00-$199.00.

.257 Roberts brass is still unobtainium.

Neck down and turn some 7 or pop up some 6 Rem.


The panic is still on here in militia-country Montana. I think the only way we'll ever see 22LR is estate sales or bankruptcy auctions.

This. Starts making things look like there was a contrived "shortage" all along. Distribution channels simply don't work as quickly as this. And production certainly would take many months to ramp up to these levels if even possible.

Somebody was sandbagging, either for continued profits or at the behest of the govt.

In retrospect, it seems kinda like that could be true. Now, I am pretty conversational with my local reloading place, and am sure they were not in on the fix.

All of the companies were running three shifts seven days a week trying to keep up, the cost of expanding production was prohibitive, and even if expanded production took place, it would take a certain amount of time to complete. So, in the less than a month since the election, a way has been found to run more than three eight-hour shifts in one day, it has been determined that expansion is cost-effective, and that expansion has been accomplished in less than one month - totally impressive accomplishments.

Same here...which BTY is where CCI's factory is located.

I can drive by their factory and see pallets of the stuff ready for shipment but the local retail shelves have been empty for years.

I know at least one local store kept cases of .22 rimfire ammo in the back room for regular customers who actually needed some, rather than put it out on the shelves where everybody who came in would buy a brick--and text all their buddies about where to find it. Same deal with one local Wal-Mart: They kept it hidden until somebody actually asked, rather than out in the open where word got out immediately and swarms of buyers showed up.

Also know of at least one American rimfire manufacturer who tried to keep up with demand during the first year or so of the "shortage" by manufacturing .22 Long Rifles 24/7. But they had to pay overtime to do it, and many workers eventually grew weary and quit. It also didn't seem to make any difference: As soon as they shipped out ammo, stores were clamoring for more. So they went back to their regular manufacturing schedule.

Meanwhile there was plenty of higher-priced .22 ammo available, and the supply of .223's and handgun ammo rebounded within a year or two. If the government was hoarding ammo, why were they hoarding cheap Long Rifles? Are people with squirrel rifles more of a threat to the government than people with AR-15's and semiauto handguns?

Be nice to get some H4350 and Reloader 33 here.

I was at the Cabela`s in Green Bay today.They had shelves of every powder I could imagine six deep.In the past two weeks I have bought 2K 22LR at about $26.00 a brick.Things are looking good.

I've seen stores decently stocked for the last 6 months +

7 - 1 pounders and 4 - 8 pounders available in my 'hood. $29 lb, 206, 8#
The last year has been pretty good for reloading supplies, 2015 was hit or miss.

Are you then saying that after Trump was elected, masses of Americans immediately quit buying 22 ammo, primers, and powders--and thus the shelves could suddenly have vast supplies within two weeks that no one wants to buy?

the SW here keeps all brands out on the shelf, but empty. you have to go to the counter and look in a 3 ring binder to see what they actually have in the back room.

they've had a pretty good selection for around 6 months now. Powder Valley has been well stocked for about he same amount of time.

Sycamore

I think we're all happy to have things 'normalize'. My LGS/powder shop was never a gouger, they were either in or out. The powders have been getting better for about the last year. For that I am thinking a lack of 'prepper/panic" buys because, well how may pounds of powder/ of 10K's of 22 ammo can a guy have to feel right.

I don't claim to hold any answers. I would like to just be able to buy a pound of H4350 when I need it and not have to forecast for shortages. Will say that thanks to previous admins I have quite a bit of powder on the shelves. Way more than I would if I could just buy enough to load for the next match.

Pricey, but available.

http://www.grafs.com/retail/catalog/category/categoryId/681?

That is exactly what I was saying in my earlier post. I do not believe there has been a significant change on the supply side since the election. The big change is on the demand side.

DakotaDeer,

Why not? The stores were basically emptied of .22 rimfire ammo two weeks after Obama was reelected, and it wasn't because factories suddenly quit making it. Shooters bought it all--and kept buying it, every chance they got. Some were afraid of not finding any when they wanted it, and some bought it to resell to those who were afraid.

Now many shooters who really wanted a stock .22 rimfires have a supply, and Trump's election calmed the fears others had of another buying panic after a Clinton victory. So yeah, I believe many people suddenly quit buying .22 rimfire after election night, in the same way they started buying it immediately after Obama's reelection. And stores that had a supply in the back room started putting more out on shelves, because the shelves wouldn't be stripped bare in a day or two.

I also believe a big part of the "shortages" was cell phones and the Internet. Any time anything showed up anywhere, whether on store shelves or Internet sites, shooters texted, called or posted other shooters about the supply. And it would be gone within a day, or even within a few hours. More than once I saw people, with the store's limit of .22 rimfire already in their hands, taking cell-phone photos of shelves and sending them to friends. One guy even posted here that he'd go buy his limit of .22's, then take them out to his pickup and put on a "disguise" and go back in to buy some more. How the hell were supplies supposed to last in stores?

As for primers and powders, they've been pretty easy to get for at least a couple of years now, if not in stores then off Internet sites. Many shooters still somehow refuse to accept the Internet as a major part of American retailing, despite the fact that the percentage of Internet sales for the majority of goods keeps rising every year. Instead they still judge supplies on store shelves.

There have been exceptions, such as Federal primers and certain kinds of brass, apparently because shooters have been buying bunches of ammo, so more primers and cases are going into factory ammunition. But Federal has also been making lots of stuff for the military, which has priority over the civilian market.

There have been actual shortages of certain kinds of powders. Some of the problem with certain Hodgdon powders was caused by a bottleneck in New Zealand while shipping powders to the U.S. The plant that makes Ramshot rifle powders in Belgium had a fire about 2-1/2 years ago, which put them way behind--and when they got back on-line military contracts in Europe were the first priority. But TAC started to show regularly up almost two years ago, and within a year the others started to follow, with Big Game, Hunter and Magnum easily available on several websites.

I don't know for sure what's going on with H4350, but have my suspicions (based on some inside knowledge) that it's due to business dealings that have nothing to do with "shortages." If so, it's connected to the introduction of the IMR Enduron powders. Other Hodgdon Extremes have been relatively easy to buy for a year or more.

Thats a start in our books. But of course it depends on how much you shoot and how old ya are. LOL.

Couple hundred pounds of powder and at least 5000 primers of each kind spare ain't a bad idea. Not like its going to go bad really.

And on another note, an email from a friend, that says his LGS got a call after the election, well seems we can now "afford" to sell you a full pallet of rimfire, not just some.

So seems the wholesalers were into trying their best to rip off the retail buying public for the most they could, in the end. At least to some point.

But of course in the end part of that is death of demand.

Honestly I"ve put off a few things that we wanted and thought would be banned like normal cap glock mags.... we can wait a bit until supply comes up and price goes to normal.

Thank you for that explanation.

BTW, I don't have a cell phone, so I may not be up on the latest and greatest "flash sales."

The manufacturers are the biggest hoarders to drive demand as well as prices through the ceiling..

Takes no genius to figure that out.

G

Availability has slowly been improving around here for a year or so. However there is no Remington or Winchester brass, no Federal Match primers or many of the old standby Alliant powders, like 2400 or Unique. Some calibers like the WSM's and 257 Roberts are still scarce. Maybe this will improve in time.

Great to see shelves full again!!!