Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Canada Have you ever bought discontinued bullets?

It's sort of a love/hate thing. The price is great, but you cannot get them again.

I used Lapua 55 gr S538s for years in my 222s and, more recently, my 223s. Apparently, they're no longer made. I got a great price on 1000 - $199 - but like they say on TV, after they're gone, they're gone!





I also got some CCI small rifle primers. Prices seem normal. These were $60/1000.

Bought a few 120 grain Hornady 257 hollow points. All I could find , would buy more if I could

I laid in a couple of hundred Barnes Original 195 gr 7mm bullets when they said they were going to stop making them. Those things knock a deer right on its butt

Steve;
Good evening sir, I hope the day was a decent one in your part of the world.

Indeed there's been a few times I've purchased or traded for bullets that I knew I'd never see again, sometimes for the price and sometimes just curiosity.

When Imperial went out of business there was a place in either Saskatoon or Calgary that ended up with a bunch of components for sale. I bought a bunch of 110gr .308" Spire Points then. Actually I still might have a bunch of them Steve, I'll have to look someday. If memory serves I couldn't get them to settle down for long range shooting and loaded a bunch up at about 1000fps for small game and training the horses to stand gunfire.

Another time a fellow offered me somewhere around 500 173gr FMJ BT Lake City Match .308" bullets for a too good to pass up price. I used them for long range shooting back in the day as they were practically as slippery as 168gr Match HP and about a quarter the price. I might have a dozen or so left, but don't regret getting them for sure. They were fun while they lasted!

I'm sure more will come to me, but I also found most of a box of 175gr RN Norma in .284" from someone on some trade. I didn't have a 7mm anything at the time, but figured someone would need them and sure enough, someone was happy to try them and subsequently killed a few local bucks with them.

Anyways Steve, that's the total that come to mind now. Knowing me, if the deal was right and the bullets interesting, I'd do it again.

All the best.

Dwayne

Even if it's not announced that a bullet is discontinued, and a current bullet with the same manufacturer desgnation is available, it may not be the same bullet. And it's rarely announced that a change has been made.

Speer and Nosler seem to be the worst at this, but Hornady and Sierra do it too. If you bisect a .308" 180 grain Partition from 1995 and do the same to a current one, you'll see the internal partition has moved, and also if you put one half of the old bullet up against a half from the newer bullet, you'll see the ogive has changed as well.

Bottom line, if you find a bullet you really, really like, stock up on it with as many as you may think you might ever need, because there's no telling when it will go away, either through discontinuation, or via design change.

I will be looking for Lapua S569 and trying some others for 300 yards and in. Lapua bullets are not cheaply made like Berry's, CamPro, etc. I am hopeful that Hornady bullets produce the same accuracy.