SoTexcurdog,
You still haven't stated where you bought the bullets.
I think I should probably post this as my small contribution to our cumulative effort to evade being seized by a conspiracy cold, as Alpine mentions.
My Howa 270's preferred Nosler BT load (the black and gold box BT) suddenly stopped being its preferred load late last year when I replaced them with Nosler blems of the same stripe and fur. I ran out of the old black and gold box yellow tips, so I ordered some seconds from SPS. They showed up with grey tips. Further more, it didn't take a pair of fine glasses to know that they were not the same shape. You could take an old black and gold pill (I had 3 left) and place it next to the new BT with the grey tip, and you could see the difference. Measuring revealed the ogive was not in the same place, and I don't mean by half a thou. I called Nosler and managed to get hold of an engineer? Man I can't remember his title, but at any rate...he called me after I left a message with Nosler actual human support. The short of it; Nosler makes their molds by hand, and over time...the shape changes a bit. And the grey tip? Those were originally intended for their combined technology bullets, but they didn't get the coating and ended up being sold as BT's.
While I had to fiddle with the load and jump to reach a state of behavior, I managed. All this as gentle warning for what others may find, and for further support the idea that bullets with the Nosler name...do in fact come from Nosler.
Have toured several bullet factories, and talked considerably about bullet manufacturing with them.
I don't doubt that somebody at Nosler told you something about their bullets varying over time--but the forming dies for jacketed bullets are NOT "molds." Instead they are indeed dies, and like reloading dies do vary somewhat, due to both having to use new reamers, and the reamers wearing "over time."
Was told by another company well-known for making very accurate bullets that they usually replace their bullet-forming dies after around 40,000 bullets--but that this also depends on their continual testing of bullet quality-, which as with most major bullet factories not only includes checking bullet dimensions, but firing tests. With hunting bullets these not only include accuracy tests, using indoor ranges to eliminate wind-drift, but shooting them into various kinds of test media.
But it's rare for bullets made from one set of forming dies to EXACTLY match the bullets made from another set. Then there's the small differences in jacket material, or lead alloys for cores. Which is why many when many target shooters find a manufacturing lot of bullets that shoot really well, they try to buy some more from that lot.
