Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles What's Your Oldest Ammo ?

You are correct, stuvwxyz - internal benet primed. Thanks for getting me back into the collection and correcting my fuzzy brain.

I have a selection of old ammo, particularly Winchester & Western. These are some of each, the Winchester packaging from 1925-35, the Western from 1925-46.

Old school cool.

As with a couple others, an inside primed 45/70 round, a handful of 45/60 and 45/75 rounds from the 1880s most likely, some black powder 303 British rounds (early 1880s), some black powder and bulk smokeless 22Short rounds (+/- 1900), several handfuls of 30/40 Krag, 32 and 38 S&W rounds of the same era, and maybe a round or two left from a case of mixed WWI era 30/06 rounds I shot up.

Have a fair bit of commercial ammo in the 1910-1930 era to match some of my firearms of that era but that is getting rather modern.

Have a govt ‘06 round stamped ‘11’. Bullet is very light colored compared to other military rounds. Have a .33 Win with a dimpled primer and very dirty. Also .50 BMG, .30-06 and .30 Carbine govt cartridges all from ‘43’. A box of Match 7.62 from 1969. Some old pistol cartridges that are old enough that I don’t know how old they are. They’re sitting in the tumbler now and I need to check and see how clean they are. Have a 16 ga paper hull with Winchester’s patent number circling the top.

Four or five years at most

Likely from the mid 70's or so. Not really that old, but as old as I have on hand. I believe it was an expensive box of ammo back then.......

I’ll haffta check. I have a bunch in a box.

I have some old paperhull shotshells from the 50s.

No idea. Some from to 80s. But somewhere there are somm 8mm and 303
that was Dads. He passed away in 1972.

I have 50+ rounds of "match grade" RWS .22 WMR ammo. Found 'em gathering dust on a shelf at a LGS over 10 years ago; hadn't been imported for several years before that. They don't seem to be much more accurate than some of the plastic-tipped stuf one can buy now, but the soft-nosed, hollow point bullets really make a bloody mess of groundhogs shot with them.

probable my oldest would be one of these 32 wsl 35wsl or the 401 winchester self loading ammo a tad newer would be 38wcf 22 hi power

I had a Savage 99F in 358 Win. with a Leupold VXIII 1.5x5 wonderful hunting setup.

A couple Mill's belts full of .30 US Army (.30-40 Krag) with Spanish-American war headstamps (all same).
A couple dozen boxes (sealed) .30-40 and .30 Gov't ('06) pre-WWI, Ball, and Guard (cast bullet) ammo.
A wooden machine gun ammo box with belted WWI-headstamped .30 ammo, all same headstamp, probably for M1917 Browning MG.
Several boxes U.S.Gov't .45-70 ammo, 1880's headstamps, partially sealed.
Several boxes 6mm Lee-Navy, 1900 headstamp.
An intact paper packet containing 10 Civil War .58 rifled-musket paper cartridges.
More pre-war shotshell boxes (full) than I can remember offhand.
Ditto, pre-war boxes (full) .22 ammo.
A dozen or so boxes pre-war Winchester CF ammo.
" " " " " " Remington & Savage ammo.
A ton-and-a half of pre-WWII and WWII Ball M1 and M2 and .45ACP ammo, plus a shoebox full of 1930 Frankford Arsenal Cal. 30 Tracers.

Now that I think of it, I probably have more old CF factory ammo than I do "modern" stuff (mainly because most of my modern ammo is stuff I loaded myself).