Reloading supplies/powder – buy more now?

I just don’t know what to do, guys.

I was browsing the old interweb between games at an all day soccer tourney my kids were in and there is powder and reloading supplies EVERYWHERE. Everyone has everything in stock, for like the first time in 6-7 freaking years. Even .22 rimfire ammo is in stock, albeit still at ripoff prices compared to years ago, but that may be the new normal as they say.

So here’s the dilemma. Because I shoot only handloads, shoot just for fun, I do a few rifle test articles every year, and my annual varmint trip west is totally dependent on having enough supplies to load 1500+ rounds, I have been buying whatever I could find, whenever I could find it during the lean years.

In other words, my shelves are fully stocked. Even in the face of the all-out crash that happened after Newtown, I was fine really. I got through the worst 3 years with only minor inconvenience.

But it got me thinking that while I hope that’s as bad as it gets, well, that may not be as bad as it gets. So I’ve been slowly stocking up. I have over 40 pounds of the most common powders I use, and I have thousands of .223 bullets. Not to make myself out to be some kind of prepper nutcase, but I am a bit concerned that the supply room IS starting to make me look like, umm, like I’m a prepper nutcase.

I still can’t shake the feeling. These full shelves at the reloading supply stores have given me a twitch like I should be buying SOMETHING.

Am I just reacting to the bad old days? Or do you guys think there’s really another panic just around the corner and it could last even longer than the last one?

Not to get into politics, but I think it’s a foregone conclusion that neither Hillary or Trump is pro gun and that neither cares much about the 2nd amendment as a priority. So I would think that now people would be buying like crazy, but nobody seems that interested.

Buy or hold?

Grouse

Grouse,
I think your on the right track with thinking things out and not buying as a reaction. What so many people don’t look at or don’t take into consideration is the built up production lines that didn’t exist 6 years ago.

Production has caught up with demand in so many ways. .22LR as an example – The demand was so high, that manufactures had to increase facilities, equipment, labor,…. of which all took time. Now that demand has been met, its eased the burden to supply.

Powders were an interesting beast. Kind of like the movie “perfect Storm”. You had two significant events collide at the same time to cause the hell we experienced. First was the increased demand. Ya, it caused a lot of grief in itself, but that demand wasn’t the only factor. Add in the shipping BS that had been going on for the previous couple years, and now you have a disaster. Product sitting in containers for months before the shipyards would let it into customs. Many containers sitting out at sea just waiting to come in for off-load. So tons of powder sat in limbo and trickled in rather than pour in. (no pun intended). Had the cargo been processed timely, I don’t think we would have seen the extent of the hoarding that we witnessed.

Because I’m a Rep in the industry, I get this or similar questions all the time. Will isolated products become difficult or an inconvenience to obtain – YES. In many ways history will repeat itself. But if you have a 1 or 2 year supply personally on hand that adequately fulfills your needs, how much more do you require to have? Is it just the peace of mind that you have more? Is there a financial benefit? Another way to look at it is the holding cost. What does it cost you to have an abundance over what you need when that money isn’t available for other things?

That will be the next thing to be proposed,,,,,,,, a limit on the amount of bullets, gunpowder, complete loaded rounds of ammo an individual may possess.
Maybe it is already on the books and I am just ignorant.

Randy, I think you’re right, but I would also add one of the biggest causes of the shortages in years past was slimy, bucket-squatting, shelf-stripping resellers who were teaming up with employees in retail stores to strip the shelves of whatever supplies did come in and then resell it on the internet or at pawn shops for massively inflated prices.

IMO the retail stores did next to nothing to break the run of these POS resellers. They just blindly dumped whatever supplies they got onto the shelves and let the vultures have them while everybody else was at work.

Randy Wieland wrote:

But if you have a 1 or 2 year supply personally on hand that adequately fulfills your needs, how much more do you require to have? Is it just the peace of mind that you have more? Is there a financial benefit?

Exactly. For the most common items I shoot, I have a 3+ year supply without buying anything. Is it enough? Well, I hope I don’t kick myself for writing this, but yes, I think that is probably enough to be honest.

You are also correct, there is no financial benefit to stockpiling more.

I hope you’re right and that the situation has changed to prevent massive runs from draining supplies with no production capacity to recover.

I also hope the retail managers out there will actually do something much sooner to break the run of slimy resellers. These are NOT your customers, they are simply vultures looking to profiteer. None of them are buying anything from you now that there ins’t a quick buck to be made. Look after your REAL customers from now on.

Grouse

Huntindave wrote:

That will be the next thing to be proposed,,,,,,,, a limit on the amount of bullets, gunpowder, complete loaded rounds of ammo an individual may possess.
Maybe it is already on the books and I am just ignorant.

It’s been talked about, but I think anyone with two brain cells to rub together realizes that it would be impossible to enforce. Without knowing how much a person shoots, it wouldn’t be possible to use the data to predict who might be stockpiling ammo for some nefarious purpose.

It would require endless resources only to find out that what looks like an unusually large purchase, was just someone taking advantage of a good price.

Grouse

Grouse, most of the reputable retailers I have worked with over the last 4-5 years did exactly that – restrict purchases to limited quantities. Manufactures and Distributors don’t get a list of “Slime-ball” Dealers. They get an order and they put it into que to be filled. The reputable retailers limited quantities so that a larger portion of their customer base had an opportunity.

As i stood around in a store for a half hour waiting for a meeting with my buyer, I can only say that I had my eyes opened to how many customers were out there. I was blown away to see 5, 10, 25, 50 guys in a hours time all stop in and ask for the same products. In some cases like Ace or True Value, my buyer is a dept manager that also works the floor. Mostly, those meeting take place right at the counter and are frequently interrupted by customer traffic. It prolongs the meeting to sometimes 2 or more hours. When it came to primers, Varget, and .22LR, the flow of good customers was nearly indescribable. They would put 2 cases of .22lrs into stock with a limit of 2 boxes……and yet they still sold out in 4 hours and 50 more guys came through the door only to be disappointed.

Randy Wieland wrote:

Grouse, most of the reputable retailers I have worked with over the last 4-5 years did exactly that – restrict purchases to limited quantities

Restricting quantities doesn’t do any good because the slimy, bucket squatting resellers just team up with their buddies and they cleaned out the shelves together.

The retailers needed to break the run by putting supplies out slowly over time rather than just dumping everything that came in onto the shelves in one heap. By making the stock levels unpredictable they could have made it so time-consuming that it would have broken the back of the resellers in weeks.

Grouse

TheFamousGrouse wrote:

The retailers needed to break the run by putting supplies out slowly over time rather than just dumping everything that came in onto the shelves in one heap.

In a perfect world maybe. Just like stores that carry tackle, they do not want tackle on shelves behind a wall. And the distributors do NOT want to warehouse anything anymore. When the tackle is gone, its gone until the next season. Reloading supplies are dealt with in the same manner and its not the store or shop that’s at fault for a shortage as a rule….its the distributor’s unwillingness to have adequate supplies in a warehouse to answer a need. Almost always.