Home Forums Reloading Big Game Rifles IMR 4350 - Price Rant

My local gunshop just got in several pounds (6 pounds I that I saw on the shelf) of IMR 4350 and it was priced at $50.75 per pound.
My jaws were tight - so I hesitated. Even though my local gunshop is usually $2.00 to $3.00 a pound cheaper than all the other outlets win 100 miles of me.
Low and behold all of that IMR 4350 sold in less than two days!
SO.... this most recent shortage (I think induced by reloading component manufacturers!) has folks "buffaloed" into these egregious prices???
No matter the "cause" a NEW DAY has befallen handloaders!
NO primers at all were available at my local gunshop and haven't been for some time.
Thanks for letting me vent.
Oh for 1969 prices and availability of components.
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

Look on the bright side. If we keep running at 15%+ inflation, that $50.75/lb will sound like a screaming deal in just a few years!

The current situation is the equivalent of a sharp peanut where you don't want it.
It will pass.
Nothing is permanent, neither ourselves, nor any government that offends us.

As frustrating as it is, you almost gotta laugh at the absurdity of it. 5 years ago they were almost giving primers away, and now they're like finding a little box of gold nuggets... at the price of a little box of gold nuggets. 🤷‍♂️

I went to load some .243 last week for my daughter in law and discovered I was almost out of H4350. Well I called around and found some locally for $62.95 a pound. I was shocked until I checked around online and found the nearly same prices before shipping and hazmat. I’m ashamed to say I bought a pound.

An 8 lb'er direct from Hodgdon is 43.12 a pound + shipping...

I do feel your pain though. I'm running out of pounds with 12.95 on the top.

I haven’t even looked lately. In the past few years I’ve met a few getting out of reloading, so I helped them liquidate some.

That's reality, at least for the foreseeable future.
Maybe if sanity returns to international and domestic politics it will get better but that is a big maybe.
In the meantime, be glad you have discretionary income and aren't trying to figure out how you are going to heat your house and pay your gas bill.

I’m not greedy. I’d take 1999 or even 2009 prices and availability.

It will never go down in price and we'll never see the availability where it once was. We are looking at more conflicts and global disruptions and political and geopolitical instabilities. We've had shortages in the past that came and went but this is bigger than than a little shortage. For goodness sake their saying were going to run out of diesel now so primers and powder are far down on the list.

Well that sucks, were you closer, i'd share in the kill, old bud after more race car parts dumped 11 pounds of imr-4350 in my lap, along with 3000 Fed-215's.

The Discovery Channel ought to start up a new TV series called Desperately Seeking Primers...

So it's only IMR-4350 that's costing more?

It’s tough, but what do you do???

Not around here it’s all of them.

let's do the math :

( 7000 grain/lb ) / ( 30 grain /cartridge ) = 233.33 cartridge / one lb

$50 /233.33 = $.21 / cartridge ,

lower the price to $40
$40/233.33 = $.17 / cartridge

$.21 - $0.17 = $0.04 difference

am i right ?

Yeah I bought it for a lot less than that last week on an 8# jug. Believe it was $43.25/lb.

Almost didn’t buy it but it wouldn’t have been there long so I snatched it.

Never had a reloading application that used 30 gr of IMR-4350. ~45 gr in a .260 is the lowest charge weight I've ever used. It changes your delta a bit.

I was in a local shop yesterday, they had a decent supply of freshly delivered Hodgdon Powders but the H4350 was $55.95 per pound. Fed large pistol primers $12.95 per 100, CCI BR SR were $14.95 per 100. Only a year ago I bought fresh WIN LR primers for $4.95 per pack (winced when I did, but glad I did now). I bought the one can of H4831sc they had for $35.00 to replenish my stock (which had all been bought at $19.95 per lbs in 1996, I’m down to a few pounds). With bullets and brass pretty decently available again (and at close to old prices) I feel it must be the manufacturers increasing the price so drastically. Now I admit I don’t know what has happened to them on their raw material costs, but I wish they would tell us.

I expect it will get a little better, but never back to BB (Before Biden) levels. Maybe if it doesn’t sell there will be some sales, maybe not. Lets face it, inflation is impacting everything: raw materials, salaries, transportation costs. No way that can’t affect powder costs too.

Easy for me to be philosophical about it, with plenty of everything I need on hand, but I hate to see others feeling the pinch in their fun. Only place I’m feeling it is in my recent involvement with shooting clays, and that’s not too awful for 50-75 rounds a week.