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I just saw an ad, here, for $30 Bulkpacks of .22 lr!. So long as the new gun-owner is willing to pay, that price will be sustained. It is the fear of ammo regulation that factors into increasing demand on the consumer side. The biggest factor is that there are more NEW gun owners and, thus, a whole new group of people increasing overall consumer demand.
Actual 'bubbles' are different (internet stocks, real estate secondary instruments such as REITS, Unit Investment Trusts, mutual funds, index funds, all manner of derivative instruments). There is, in truth, little or no transparency (why is index arbitrage potentially so profitable?), and less actual ability for the little guy to respond and adjust even if those markets were transparent, i.e., big movers make their moves fast, and they do so on the trading floor directly (much, much faster than the solo investor, whose purchase/sell orders are delayed by institutional design) and these big killer whales create the trending up and down, drowning and devouring the fools traveling through the kill zone. Moreover, we've learned, in the last decade, or three, that the actual underlying assets represented by these instruments, for those savvy enough to investigate, realistically could have an inherent/intrinsic value of ZERO, without the fools knowing such fact until it is too late to bail.
Gunowners, generally (perhaps not people new to gun/ammo buying) are sophisticated consumers (though some call us 'bitter clingers', or more offensive names implying less so-called 'intelligence'), and we know the inherent/intrinsic value of the commodity (ammunition), and, thus, in most cases, are willing and able to adjust our purchasing behaviors and resist (panic) buying.
I stopped buying guns, because it would be ridiculous to pay Ruth Chris' prices to feed them, when I need only a Whopper to feed them (and they love that Whopper and they can go without eating a Whopper forever, if need be). Hoarder/re-sellers are banking on the newbies being desperate to get out and shoot, and also on the latter not being aware of pricing history. I hope both that the former (i.e., aspiring profiteers) lose their liquidity soon, and that gun owners spite them hard. They will clamor to sell to break-even, eventually.
So, I wouldn't consider the ammo market a bubble, where unit price to inherent value retains a much more direct, identifiable, and transparent relationship. Aren't gun forums, with such a generous exchange of information, AWESOME? Let me repeat .... AWESOME!
Further, and most importantly, IMHO, ammunition is a durable consumable commodity itself, the hard asset is the lot of cartridges/bullets itself. It can remain forever in storage somewhere, whether or not someone believes its value will increase or decrease, and the actual value of a cartridge/bullet will NEVER be ZERO at the same time that it cannot reach retarded-high prices, provided there is neither legislation prohibiting sale of the firearms to which the ammo will be fed, nor legislation restricting the sale of the ammo itself.
The only psychological factor is fear of the Obama administration attempting to enact more restrictive ammo-regulation or prohibitions. If that actually happens, the analytical model changes to something more along the lines of black-and-grey-market trading. We will no longer be living in the United States at that point, and free(er)-market capitalism will have been a fond memory.
