Ammo pricing - supply & demand, or something else?

Sorry Larry, I think you are incorrect -- at least in this point in time.

The .380 that is out there is selling even at it's (perceptionally) inflated price.

And I don't think you'd see .380 ammo sales matching 9mm ammo sales even if they were closer in price simply because 9mm is, for the most part, much more enjoyable to shoot than .380. The bulk of the guns chambered in 9mm are much larger and easier to shoot than the small-ish .380 guns on the market.

Not to mention the fact that the 9mm has been a popular U.S. market handgun choice for decades -- while the .380 has only been a big sales item for the last 6-8 years at most. Before the pocket gun boom and the sweeping concealed carry reform across the USA, .380 chambered handguns were as scarce as hen's teeth.
 
No, the .380 round will never come close to the 9mm for sales volume. My point is that I believe we shoot a lot less .380 for practice due to the cost. I know I do. If you want to justify retooling for the .380 instead just cranking out 9mm all day, if they lowered the cost to make it more attractive to shoot then the volume consumed would increase due to lower cost and better availability. I believe that if they made 1 million .380 rounds and priced them to move instead of 1 million rounds of $10/box 9mm that they will realize more money in the end. At the present prices the .380 ammo would sell slowly and they won't turn their inventory like the 9mm does. Right now they crank out the 9mm round and it sells for $10 due to competition when they can sell the .380 round for $3-$4 more per 50 and if priced right they could sell every one as well. I know I'd shoot A LOT more .380 if it was $12 or $13 per 50 instead of the $16-$18 per 50 it is now. I'd shoot less 9mm and more .380 because I own a few .380s too. I doubt I'm alone in this thinking. Right now it's almost as much to shoot .380s as the .45ACP. Ridiculous.
 
My point is that I believe we shoot a lot less .380 for practice due to the cost
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then reloading sounds like a winning deal you should look into

if they lowered the cost to make it more attractive to shoot then the volume consumed would increase due to lower cost and better availability
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I doubt it - most folks who bought 380s do not shoot them very much - they are not designed as range guns

Right now it's almost as much to shoot .380s as the .45ACP. Ridiculous.
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So? Why is that ridiculous? Missed the other posts about tooling, production, inventory costs, etc.? Or do you think because it uses less lead it automatically should be cheaper

If it bothers you that much, you have several options: Don't shoot so much, get another job to pay the increased costs, go in on a group bulk buy to cut some costs, or - the easiest by far - reload your own ammo. cast your own bullets and you can shoot 380 for about $4/box
 
We can agree to disagree. That's fine. I've spent most of my life working economics, marketing and production. I know very well about costs to produce.
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if they lowered the cost to make it more attractive to shoot then the volume consumed would increase due to lower cost and better availability

I doubt it - most folks who bought 380s do not shoot them very much - they are not designed as range guns
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Just because you say it's so doesn't make it so. I am speaking from experience and every day life. There are a lot of .380s out there that don't weigh 12oz and are all steel. People do not shoot them as much due to ammo cost as I have been told by many. How many people carry .380s daily? Do you think they practice as much as those who carry 9mm do? I know I don't but I would like to. Cost is a huge factor. Don't bother to tell me to carry a 9mm then. I don't want to hear it from you or anybody else.

then reloading sounds like a winning deal you should look into
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I am looking into reloading but right now I do not have the time to do it. Not everybody has the time or space to do it properly.

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Right now it's almost as much to shoot .380s as the .45ACP. Ridiculous.

So? Why is that ridiculous? Missed the other posts about tooling, production, inventory costs, etc.? Or do you think because it uses less lead it automatically should be cheaper
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If you are set up for it, as ammo companies are, it is cheaper. If you reload then you know that. Arguing for the sake of argument?

If it bothers you that much, you have several options: Don't shoot so much, get another job to pay the increased costs
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Boy, you are classless. What's up your back side? This goes further than this discussion.
If you don't like my comments you have several options: Stop posting or move to a different board. See? Makes as much sense as your comments. Both are wrong and both are rude.
 
Larry, you may have all the economics experience in the world, but there's one thing you don't have -- an ammunition company. I'm going out on a limb by saying that as I don't know you, but I suppose if you DID have an ammo company, we'd have at least one source for $10-per-box .380 ammo but alas, we do not.

We can all have our differing opinions but when your one voice claims that you know better how to make piles of cash in the ammunition business than the 20 different ammo companies I can name -- we'll have to part ways in the discussion.

If you think it stinks, if you are annoyed by .380 prices and you demand change-- I get that. If you think you know better how to make profits than do the ammo companies... I think your position is laughable.
There are a lot of .380s out there that don't weigh 12oz and are all steel. People do not shoot them as much due to ammo cost as I have been told by many.
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There are also a lot of 1967-1971 Chevrolet Chevelles still roaming the earth -- I've seen them, I've seen TV shows on them, I've seen magazines on them and car forums dedicated to them. However you define "a lot", they pale in comparison to how many daily drivers with 4-cylinder and 6-cylinder engines in them are out there in traffic right now.

That's about how relative your comment about .380s on the market is to how many 9mm or .45 pistols there are on the market. They may seem quite popular and they are, but this is a recent development. The 9mm has been flooding the earth's handgun market since shortly after 1900. .380 pistols weren't either popular or plentiful until the late 1990's at the earliest.

Calling it anything else is fantasy.
 
".380 pistols weren't either popular or plentiful until the late 1990's at the earliest."

Eh.....

Not really.

Up until World War II the various .380s were the best selling class of semi-automatics available, with the .32s following closely behind.

Several million of both kinds were made and sold in the United States during that period.

These guns were EXTREMELY popular in the United States as well as world wide.

The 9mm was primarily a military handgun (just like the .45 ACP). Sales in the European civilian market were small. Sales in the US market were virtually non-existent.

The 9mm didn't start taking off as high-volumn sales item in the United States until the late 1970s when police forces in the US began to shift to semi-autos.

When the Wonder9 phase hit in the early to mid 1980s with the introduction of the Glock, that's when things began to really sing.


Even with the recent rise in popularity of the .380s, I bet they're not anywhere close to the popularity that the cartridge/gun combo had prior to World War II.
 
Without a doubt I would shoot my LCP twice as much if the ammo was just a few bucks less, but that could be said for any pricey round I guess.
I don’t ever expect it to be in the 9mm range, but costing more than 45acp keeps my current stash on the shelf and the LCP in its holster.

While I do understand and accept some of the reasons for 380 being priced near or above 45, it also seems reasonable that the enormous (~3:1) materials usage difference between the two would enable the 380 to make up a little more ground in its final price than it does.
Lead prices alone have increased by more than 200% over the past 6 years (normalized and ignoring the 07-08 pricing).

I do think that all of these manufacturers try to keep an eye on each others production and will "sit on", slow-sell or artificially inflate prices if they think they've got a temporary monopoly on particular caliber.

Since we have brought our troops home, substantially reducing demand for specific rounds, it will be interesting to see if those prices sink to unload stock that would otherwise need to be warehoused.
If not, is there is a real possibility that ammo prices are artificially set?
 
Given all the 9mm service pistols mass produced by the zillions long before the Wondernine crazy of the 80s and early 90s (albeit not a huge love for them in North America until later), I would find it awfully hard to believe that the .380 would even make a dent in the global popularity and usage and production and "shots fired" in 9mm over the same period. And that's not even mentioning subguns and pistol caliber carbines (admittedly, also a small blip compared to the handguns, but still)

Walther service pistols? Luger pistols? The Smith & Wesson 39 and 59 series pistols? The immeasurable fleet of Glock pistols, and every piece of tupperware by every firm that ever followed?

I think 9mm pistol count and usage probably dwarfs .380 on a 10-1 basis. Not that I have any idea how we'd ever go about finding an accurate answer to this.
 
Virtually all of those 9mm handguns were, as I noted, military service handguns, Sevens.

Relatively few of them were civilian owned and used, which is the basis of discussion in this thread.

Keep that civilian usage factor in mind, because it makes a big difference.

The small "vest pocket" type guns in .25, .32, and .380? Walther, Mauser, Hanel, CZ, and ton of other makers made dozens, if not hundreds of sub-caliber handgun models for civilian sales for decades.

Neither Walther nor Mauser got into the civilian sale of 9mm handguns until AFTER World War II.

FN didn't offer a 9mm Luger-chambered handgun for sale, the Hi Power, (and it's very debatable if any really went to the civilian market) until the eve of World War II, and again it was directed primarily at the military market. Prior to that time, though, FN had produced over 1 million .380s for the commercial market.

The same is true of CZ, and just about any other manufacturer you can name.

As for Smith & Wesson, you do realize that the 39 and 59 were both produced AFTER World War II, that they were marketed primarily to police forces, and civilian sales of those handguns amounted to something like 50,000 to 100,000 units? Until the Wonder9 phase put a charge in them?

It wasn't, as I said, until the 1970s that Smith & Wesson's 9mm handgun market started selling guns in large numbers.

Despite its almost mythical aura, the 9mm as a heavy hitter in the civilian market in the United States simply didn't happen until well after World War II.

In most of the rest of the world? What civilian market? Due to more and more draconian laws world wide, the civilian market for handgun sales of all kinds has been shrinking for decades.


"The immeasurable fleet of Glock pistols, and every piece of tupperware by every firm that ever followed?"

Yes, what about them? They were all introduced POST 1985ish. Yes, there have been many sold. But, once again, their booming popularity starting in the 1980s doesn't diminish from the fact that the 9mm didn't become a wide-selling and popular handgun in the United States until well after World War II, and prior to that time, as I noted, the .380 ruled.

I have no figures to back up this claim, but I'd bet hard money that the number of .380s sold in any decade in the United States between 1900 and 1940 easily buried the total number of 9mms sold in the United States between 1904 and 1950, inclusive.
 
Boy, you are classless. What's up your back side? This goes further than this discussion.
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What's up yours? YOU came on here whining about the cost of ammo as if the companies should follow your business model to make themselves rich and help you out, but they don't seem to be listening. Maybe you should be preaching at them then.

I gave you alternatives to your dilemma....sorry if you don't like them

As Mike has pointed out, 380 is not some obscure cartridge; you can bet, (since you say you were in production and marketing and economics), that the folks at the various ammo companies have done their research, plugged it into their business model, and have arrived at their current solution with a lot of thought and planning. There is a GLUT on the shelves of 380 right now. Since you know economics, then you know that the consumer ultimately sets the price of all goods and services. If every 380 shooter out there felt the same as you, then the prices would be dropping because no on would be buying. However, that doesn't seem to be the issue at this point in time
 
that the consumer ultimately sets the price of all goods and services
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I guess thats the point of why I started this thread... I dont think we set ammo prices any more than we set fuel prices.

I tend to think they charge what they want to charge at a given time based on the environment of their "commodity", if we buy we buy, if we dont they modify their plan to maintain steady revenue.
 
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Of course we do, just like fuel prices........ If the product isn't selling at the given price,over supply happens and then the price drops. Gas, ammo, fruit, whatever, the markets react to demand and supply
 
Of course we do, just like fuel prices........ If the product isn't selling at the given price,over supply happens and then the price drops. Gas, ammo, fruit, whatever, the markets react to demand and supply
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+1 for that summary by oneounceload.

Adam Smith took several hundred pages in a very boring, but instructive book to say just that. Maybe he took several hundred pages because it is really hard to get people to realize it, as is illustrated by this thread. Conspiracies are just so darn attractive!

I'll pile on with one more attempt to explain: I bought a box of Remington Golden Sabre 9mm 124gr +P JHP (25rds) about 2 hours ago. I paid $38 for them. This is a ridiculous price. Ridiculously high!. But I was in a bind. It's my standard carry ammo and I'm on my last box. I was on the way to the range and I always shoot a mag or 2 of my carry ammo. I had to stop at a hardware store on the way to pick up this ammo.

This ammo is available at WalMart for $25 per box (but the nearest WalMart is 40miles RT out of the way). It's available at cheaperthandirt for $27 but I can't wait for shipping. I can get it at my LGS, but that chiseler charges $42 a box! The range carries various ammo in its attached gunstore (but no Rem GS), but their prices are worse than my LGS. So I went to the hardware store.

My point is that I have options. So I'm confident that if there is gouging, fixing or other shenanigans going on, it is the fault of the retailer, not the manufacturer. If retailers want to actually sell ammo regularly you'd think they'd price it more competitively (like Walmart), but it is not for me to question their lack of desire to sell the product they stock.
 
With a glut of .380 sitting on the shelves then that means the prices will begin to fall. They are sitting there because most shooters won't pay the high prices for this round. Once the producers get back logged at the factory they'll reduce the cost to the resellers to move them out. A big box store may then have a blow out sale and things could level out. Yes, supply and demand. Like I said before, if it was $12-$13 a box I would shoot a lot more than I do now. What are the hottest selling pistols now? Yes, the pocket nines but also the pocket .380s like the LCP and the new Sig .380. They may not be range guns but I have put 1600+ rounds thru my LCP and it would be double that if the ammo cost less. It is supply and demand and the demand is there for these new pistols but people are only putting the minimum thru them due to cost as much as anything else. Hopefully it will even out and we can get back to the way it was before the "ammo shortage".
 
.380 was $70 a box two years ago.
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Yep, at Cheaper Than Dirt (not that high locally).
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And at every Gun Show I went to for about a year...:)
I bought a set of Lee .380 dies for about $25, and loaded my own .380 during that time period. Otherwise, my LCP would have gathered a lot of dust.
 
Sorry Larry, there is no ammo shortage. Just asmany folks seem to have no issue with today's current pricing since the ammo is selling at the current pricing
 
one ounce, I agree. However there was a shortage and price spike when Obama took office. I was not the OP and all I did was share my frustration at the high price of certain ammo. I still buy it and I still shoot it but as I've stated, I would shoot a lot more .380 if it was priced closer to 9mm ammo. Before the price spike it was priced a lot closer to the 9mm round.

I just don't understand why I got flamed for wishing .380 ammo was cheaper, considering it is still a popular round. All I did was offer my opinion on a post started by someone else. We all have opinions. That's why we're here. Gas prices are rising again and in the past it has climbed and fallen like a roller coaster. We may have cut out some of our non-essential driving but just because we still buy it doesn't mean we're happy about the price.
 
You really need to look into reloading that round, Larry - You'll save enough to allow you to shoot more for the same money - just like shooting 410 or 28 gauge ammo. Lower production runs means those shells sell for almost twice what the 12 gauge stuff does, even though they have less component material in them. Reloading brings the price WAY down.

We all wish things would be priced lower, but reality is this: if someone else is willing to pay the asking price, the price will stay where it is. Retailers need to make a profit to stay in business. Most people think a business should charge 5 or 10% over what that item cost them to buy - they forget about licenses, income taxes, utilities, salaries, payroll taxes, shipping costs, carrying costs, etc. If something was to be priced only according to its component costs, the computer software would be $.99 cents for the CD it comes on.

If you want to get sick about mark-ups, check out what furniture, jewelry, cameras, etc. have on them.

Also remember, there is an 11% built-in Federal tax on all sporting guns and ammo
 
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