Ammo pricing - supply & demand, or something else?

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Dashunde

New member
What am I missing with regard to ammo pricing as it relates to the rules of supply and demand?

When we saw 45ACP climb to $30 for a box of bulk it made sense... the shelves were empty and we love that round, the price hike made sense.

What is the reason for bulk 380 costing the same as 45ACP using less than half of the materials while my local stores have both of them by the ton on pallets lately?
 
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I would guess that .380 costs as much as .45acp because of usage. More .45acp is consumed then .380. Same reason .223 is less expensive then .222 magnum. They are almost the same cartridge size wise, but there is 100x more .223 sold. Maybe 1000x more.

But I could be wrong?
 
.380 was $70 a box two years ago. These days supply has increased and demand has leveled off a bit, and now .380 ammo is $20 a box or so.

That was a perfect example of supply and demand.
 
Unfortunatly with the current economy one must be a wise shopper. The last gun show I was at there were several people selling 45acp winchester ranger at 40 and up per 50 round box. There is a dealer here that sells the same for 170 or less for department, or around 260 a 500 round case to an individual.

I dont buy the hype to just put money in another persons pocket.
 
Same reason .223 is less expensive then .222 magnum. They are almost the same cartridge size wise, but there is 100x more .223 sold. Maybe 1000x more.
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Exactly, a production line can run .223 for 360 days a year and have each days production shipped on the same day to distributors, no storage or inventory costs.

That same line gets retooled and runs .222 for 5 days and it takes the manufacturer a whole year to sell that 5 days worth of production, incurring storage and inventory costs to do so. Those costs get passed along in the final ammo price.

Add onto that the fact that the manufacturer needs to be compensated for taking the time and effort to retool that line for .222 ammo and then back to .223. If they only made 10% profit on both .223 and .222 then they wouldn't even bother making ANY .222, they would just keep the line cranking out .223 year round. However if they charge a 25% profit on the .222 then it makes sense for them to take the line off of .223 production and make as much .222 ammo as they can sell. Sure the .222 ammo will be more expensive, but at least you can buy all you want.

So you have the additional storage and inventory costs PLUS the extra profit required to motivate the manufacturer to endure the inconvenience of retooling a line for a low-volume cartridge. Nothing evil or exploitative about it, it's simple economics.

If you want the cheapest price on a certain cartridge then the volume needs to be high enough that a manufacturer can run a production line in that cartridge for close to 24/7/365. The longer that a manufacturer can run a production line without having to retool the cheaper the price will be.

This is why it was impossible to get 380 ammo during the 08 shortage, with demand so high for 9mm no manufacturer was going to take a production line down to retool for 380, the resulting 380 ammo would demand an even higher premium that most people wouldn't pay.
 
That is an excellent post -- but don't forget, it wasn't just the ammo, it was absolutely the component bullets that are used in the factory ammo that met the same fate.

I was trying to get .40 cal component pistol bullets from Nosler in the middle of the Barackolypse and I contacted them. Nosler is primarily a rifle bullet company and they have only one single handgun bullet production line that must be tooled up by caliber/product. They were running at 100% and adding employees and shifts to attempt to answer to the unprecedented demand, and running of some bullets were a much higher priority than others.

The factory ammo producers need component bullets to make that ammo.

There are many factors involved that affect prices.
 
Don't forget economy of scale. .45 ammo likely moves in greater volume than .380 thus they produce much more .45 ammo than .380.
 
"Yep, at Cheaper Than Dirt (not that high locally)."

.380 got damned close to the $70 a box level at a couple of gunshows I was at.
 
Component cost is part of the equation. Demand is another. Most people I know don't practice much with their little 380's. I just don't think they are much fun to shoot in general.

The 222 example is a good comparison. I believe the majority of the people still shooting the 222 or 222 Magnum are reloaders, hence there is a very limited demand for either of those calibers in loaded ammo.

Noticed on one website that the Remington 41 mag ammo is in the $60 area for a box. For Remington, the 41 mag is a seasonal production item. I suspect the 380 used to be as well, but with the popularity of the pocket sized handguns now it may well have moved to a regular production item.
 
Ammo, or anything else, costs what it costs because that's approximately what it can be sold for. This requires willing sellers and willing buyers.

Price is a continual, ongoing, never finished negotiation between the whole universe of sellers and the whole universe of buyers.

Trying to make it anything else is either silly or malicious or tyrannical.
 
some of it is supply and demand, and some of it is production reasons. to change over the tooling of a machine from creating 9mm ammo to 380 ammo can take a couple of hours. with a machine that can create 600 rounds a minute, they have just lost 36000 rounds of production. they don't like to changeover that often, so they might do a couple of weeks of running a higher demand round, and only a couple days of a lower demand round. this shrinks the supply even further.
 
With gas in the USA reportedly going to $5 a gallon, you are going to see all of it go up. Not to mention every commodity we consume and primarily food. My wife mentioned today that practically everything she puts in a grocery shopping cart is at least a dollar or up these days.

I reload practically every round I shoot; although you will see reloading supplies go up too.
 
lol i should have read crosshairs post before making mine. i think he had more of the details right. i had a guy who worked in that industry tell me once a few years ago. my details may have been a little off.
 
It looks like some ammo has gone up in price. In the last year a box of 20, 45 Colt at WM has gone from $18 to $23. In the last 2 years Fed Bulk 22's have gone from $13 to $18. 9mm is also up a couple dollars a box.
 
Most people I know don't practice much with their little 380's. I just don't think they are much fun to shoot in general.
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That may be part of it but FOR ME, I shoot a lot less .380 than I want to because it's ridiculous to pay $18 for a box of 50 for .380 while a box of 50 in 9mm is $10. It boils down to cost.

I see how the production runs make sense. However, if you can sell the .380 a lot closer to the 9mm, say $13 for 50 versus $10 for the 9mm, I'd bet the .380 demand would rise accordingly. A lot of the hottest guns are .380s and I'd be willing to bet they's sell a lot more .380 ammo if the price was closer. At $4 per 50 more instead of $8, they would recoup their cost by selling volume. Why would you want to push product for $10 when you can sell a decent amount at $14 with a slightly less cost to make? One of the ammo makers needs to "specialize" in the .380 ammo and crank it 24/7, sell it closer to the 9mm and I'll bet they'll make more $$ per million sold than the 9mm. IMO of course.
 
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