Peace! Yeah. Bless you all.
I am not a reloader , so I think there is some point obvious that I do not see. Years ago, I bought a box of reloads that were in their original manufacturers box, but with a strip of masking tape saying "RELOADS". This at a gun club show , and from someone I had known for years. Getting home, I realized that due to being familiar with the seller, I failed to ask him if he had personally reloaded, or had got that box in on a trade. My lack of essential knowledge thus prevented ever firing them. Sorry about being so lengthy, but I do not understand what to look for to see if a cartridge has been reloaded - if it should come in the original box, but not marked as reloads? I have bought opened boxes with most of cartridges still there, and fired cases also. These from older people I knew well, who had stopped shooting and were cleaning up. So the box having been opened isn't a reliable indicator for reloads.
Thanks in advance . .Pat
The dead giveaway would be either the stamp on the base of the brass doesn't match the manufacturer on the box, or you find mixed manufacturers' stamps on the base of the brass.
However, let's go to an extreme - all of the cases are from the same manufacturer, and the stamp on the brass matches the manufacturer on the box. Now it becomes more difficult, especially with once-fired brass.
I can take once-fired brass, clean and polish the brass and it looks like new, so there is no way to tell from the brass alone whether the finished cartridge is commercially loaded or reloaded.
You would then have to get into the bullet versus the manufacturer and whether it matches the type of bullet found in a particular manufacturer's ammunition for a specific bullet weight.
Then you'd have to look at the primer, and the only thing you'd see is whether the primer is silver or brass colored and whether that matches specific manufacturer's primer for the bullet weight.
If the brass has been reloaded multiple times, it becomes easier because the brass gets scratched or marked. With ammunition used in a semi-auto, the extractor claw will sometimes leave marks on the rim. Those kind of wear marks don't generally polish out, so the brass, even when it's been polished, looks shiny but "used."
But, with once fired, polished brass from the same manufacturer - really difficult to identify a reload from an original manufacturer's load. Especially if the stamp on the brass matches the manufacturer on the box.
