Brass Case Brand Recommendations

Neat timing on this thread because I have just begrudgingly started down the road of headstamp sorting my 9mm. That's the bad news. The good news is that 9mm is purely a utilitarian cartridge for me and has no recreational value (i.e., I don't take 9's out to the range to have a nice time; but only to get practice with them for carry/defense. Maybe twice a year) so there's no hurry. And . . . I have tons of factory ammo. (I've been handloading since '84, but never loaded the 9 until 2013 - and have still done only a smattering of work ups.)

Just to add some additional info: The "WMA" are from Winchester White Box "Nato" ammo. At least, that is the case (no pun) with mine. I bought four or five boxes (50) in 2013 (124gn FMJ) and they're headstamped "WMA 13." The WCC's and WIN's are from regular Winchester White Box - at least that is my experience. About 2013-ish, I also bought a bunch of boxes of "regular" (not Nato) Winchester White Box 124's & 115's; and they're stamped "WIN." Not "WCC," which is what I'm used to seeing in years past.

There have been times when I worked up a hot loading of 9mm and sorted a bunch of the same stamp on the fly for the work up. But any basic range ammo got mixed brass. It's time to get more formal with it and start sorting. I'll still used mixed for the range fodder; but anything more "serious" will definitely get like headstamps. As if I needed more stuff to do with my "spare time" *sigh* :D.
 
When I had several K of mixed cases I sat down and separated all by head stamp. Once done I set about cleaning and doing a more in depth internal inspection. Not having read about the separation issue with the stepped cases i simply loaded them to target load specs.

It only took one case separation to determine that those were not going through my dies again. Once the neck separated the next case drove it home in the chamber making getting it out a major pain.

Other than that however, I load just about anything for simple target fodder. With the higher octane loads I use new or once fired Starline, Win, or Rem cases.

Hope that helps.
 
Okay guys, this is all great information. I'm about ready to take the major quantities of brands that I have and count them. Let's see what we are dealing with on the breakdown. Here are the major brands in the pile in no particular order;

Speer
AGUILA
RP
F C
G.F.I
PMC
Win
Blazer
USA
CBC
WMA
S&B

And out of these it looks like WMA is the one with crimped primer pockets.

So that's a dozen brands, I can reload them each separately and do some research at the range etc. Now I'm going to weigh them and see what I have the most of in order.

INTERESTING NOTE --> I have weighed 100 of each to get a per/case gram weight. There is very little, if any difference. So, maybe Blazer was getting a bad rap. There is no significant difference but just a few grams here or there. I'm thinking that there must be a protocol or standard requirement for these on the thickness, weight etc.
 
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