Gift box of bullets...how OLD are these things?

A

armoredman

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i was gifted a box of Sierra bullets this morning, marked "22 Cal Bench-Rest 53gr .224 HOLLOW-POINT" The cardboard, metal reinforced ox is slightly damaged but still factory sealed. What caught my eye was the price tag - $5.99. I'm not sure whether i should load them or donate them to a local museum! :eek::cool::D
 
Sierra was using those boxes as recently as 25 years ago as I still have some. Not sure about the terminology and bench rest designation. I think their shelf life is a few hundred years. :) Load em and choot em.

Ron
 
I still have a few of those boxes.
Not terribly old.

I think I bought one as recently as 1998, or so. It may have been 'new, old stock' but it was still on the shelf of Sportsman's Warehouse (the original, in Midvale, UT).
 
I have some as well, price in the several bucks range. Got them from a friends Grandfathers estate. Id guess late 80s at the oldest. Fun none the less.

Anthoer good one while on the subject is a box a friend gave me of his father in laws 8mm mauser reloads, box has stickers of dates/loads on it, earliest is '68 I think, latest of '89. Impressive simply that a card board box lasted that long.
 
25 years ago, I'm pretty sure I was paying $10-$15 a box for Speer and Hornady jacketed rifle bullets.

I have one of the cylindrical cardboard cartons of Bullseye with a sub-$7.95 price tag on it somewhere, though.
 
I participated in a bulk purchase that came straight from the factory in those cardboard boxes right around and about 1994 or 1995. So I'm thinking it's closer to 20 years since the plastic appeared. But call the factory and ask. They won't mind. The lot number will be on the box, so they might even be able to give you the exact year if they've computerized their old records.
 
I have about a dozen of those boxes still around, .22, .243 and .30 caliber. Only one .30 caliber has a price tag on it, I think $5.49. I think I might keep a few.
 
Sierra used two different types of those boxes, the earlier ones were dark green, the later ones were closer to the color of the current plastic boxes.

When I started reloading in the late 80s, they used the light green Cardboard boxes, the darker green are from the 70s as I understand it.

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If the address is on the box, you can narrow it down slightly, Sierra was located in Santa Fe Springs CA until 1990, since then, they have been located in Sedalia MO.
 
Hold on to them (or at least the box with the price tag) and when you have an unsuspecting reloading buddy over casually take it out and say:
"Or we could use the EXPENSIVE stuff."
 
THanks for the tip - according to Wikipedia, Sierra moved to Whittier California sometime in the lates 40s/50s until 1963, when they moved to Santa Fe Springs. Also, the 53 grain bullet was the first thing they made, the flagship of the company. So these babies are at least 53 years old in a factory sealed box.
That's pretty darn cool.



That's it, right there. Slight damage and wear and tear, but still pretty neat. I know, oddball collectible, I guess.
 
You think THAT one is old - I looked at the open box i didn't pay much attention to...



That one is opened and written on one end, doesn't have the right bullets in it, but pretty darn neat! If I'm reading Wiki right, this one is perhaps a decade or more older than the one above.

No idea why the color went weird on the second picture - both boxes are the same color as the first pic shows.
 
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I knew that it had to predate 75 or so, as this is older than the boxes I have from that time period, but I didn't know that it could go that far back. I have never seen anything with that vintage label, the ones I have that date back to the seventies have got just plain green cardboard with none of the fancy lettering and dark green sides.
 
It bothers me that the sedalia factory is only a few hundred miles from my home and I have never gone for a tour. It's just that it is a few hundred miles into the middle of nowhere with no reason to go there except to visit a bullet factory. I've already tried asking my wife if she wanted to go for a long road trip to visit certain places and gotten the eye roll. we pretty much go nowhere that doesn't have her family at the end of the trip.

We did go to memphis to see the titanic, and colorado for a week. The only other long range trips we ever made were to travel to omaha to see my grandmother a few times. In fact, I even made three of those trips alone, because she was even less interested in seeing my grandmother than she was to see the bullet factory.

OTOH, driving ninety miles to buy apples is a different matter...
 
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