The cost of things .....

Remember that through much of the 1970s and into the 1980s inflation rates were quite high.


And, I'm going to move this to general discussion because we're talking about all sorts of firearms, not just revolvers, now.


Warning, though. If this turns into a general discussion, or political screed, about American economic policy, it will be shut down.

We're a firearms discussion board.
 
In 1990 I could buy a minty Luger pistol for $400, a brand-new Irish Lee-Enfield for $175, a Norwegian Mauser for $125, Ishapore Lee-Enfield for $100.

I don't recall prices being substantially higher in 1994, except for perhaps AR-15s and such.

Romanian 8mm Mauser ammo was $50 a can. Most common boxes of collectible .22 ammo were $5 a box, or thereabouts. Shooting .22LR was $10 a brick, .22Magnum was $37.50 a brick, and .223 from Winchester was $3.95 a box when not on sale for $2.95. A 5,000 round case of .22 ammo was $80.

Those prices were about double what they were in 1975, which in turn where about double that of 1965, except for .22 ammo, that seemed to run a constant $4 or $5 a brick no matter what, until the 1980's.

Remember the lines around the block at the banks when they debased the coinage in 1964? And the incredible prices for tangible assets and collectibles in the 1970's? Folks knew the money was becoming worthless and tried to protect what they had.
 
Prior to 1986 and FOPA, which freed up importation of ammunition, I remember prices for ammo being MUCH higher. FOPA 1986 drove commercial ammo prices down through competition.

I have a box of 9mm PMC that I bought about 1984, and the price on it then was close to $20, and that was from the least expensive gun shop in the area.

Not all that long ago WWB ammo in the value packs was less than $10 per 50.

That's gone up quite a bit through simple supply and demand, but I suspect those prices are going to start dropping soon.
 
Mike, when you are talking about the price of ammo now compaired to a few decades ago you also have to factor in one more thing. The speed of the reloading presses used today is much faster than the factory presses of yesteryear. Just like high-speed automation has reduced the price of other items, it has done it with ammo.
 
I find it interesting that I used to pay about $22/box of 20 22-250 in 1983 and it runs roughly $25/box of 20 some 30 years later!
 
Mike, when you are talking about the price of ammo now compaired to a few decades ago you also have to factor in one more thing. The speed of the reloading presses used today is much faster than the factory presses of yesteryear. Just like high-speed automation has reduced the price of other items, it has done it with ammo.
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This was what I was talking about in post #17, Doyle .....

.... and one would think that with advances in materials technology and decades to improve and streamline processes, the quality of the product would go up and the price would go down* .... in many finished products, the exact opposite has been the case, it seems.
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Skans- the 22-250 was just barely out of wildcat status back in the early 1980's .... and I never saw one in the wild until the 1990's ..... I doubt you could find ammo for it just anywhere back then ...... though it's still a niche cartridge, it's probably selling better now than in 1983 ...... economy of scale, and all that jazz ..... the things I'm talking about are commodities, more or less .... what were you paying for, say, .308, 270WIN, or 30-06 compared to now?
 
New loading machines doesn't explain the lockstep drop in ammo prices in 1986-87.

Battles for market share vs a massive influx from foreign sources does.

Ammo companies updated equipment in order to stay competitive, but even that doesn't fully explain the drop in prices.
 
30 years ago a box of generic hunting 30-06 was about $10 and a box of 9mm FMJ was about $8. In today's dollars that is $23 and $18. There are many quality low cost firearms now relative to back then. Shooting was much more expensive relative to salaries 30 years ago and 50 years ago. People owned far fewer firearms. Ammo prices crashed in the very early 90s and did not start to recover until the late 2000s.
 
30 years ago a box of 30-06 was about $10 and a box of 9mm FMJ was about $8. In today's dollars that is $23 and $18.
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Plain jane, cup-and-core ammo in common calibers (270WIN, 308, 30-06, etc) is regularly priced less than $23/box of 20 at the local BigBoxStore ..... as is 9mm FMJ (less than $18) .... niche calibers ..... not so much.

The "crash" when foreign competition hit was a market correction, due to artificially high prices produced by protectionist legislation .... it forced domestic companies to compete ...... competition is good. Lack of it makes for inefficiency and shoddy goods .....

I noted a change in the late 90's/early 2000's with the introduction of '"Premium" hunting ammo .... the ammo companies came up with a product that the cheap foreign players could not provide .... and charged appropriately for it.
 
Factored for inflation most of us are working about the same number of hours, often less, to buy the same items we bought for less money 20-30-or even 40 years ago.
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I still say that factoring in productivity improvements (the Internet, for one, and better transportation, shipping (Fed Ex/UPS), better processes (CAD, better machinery (CNC) ..... things should be much cheaper, much better, or both ..... not "about the same" ....

btw, I don't put a lot of stock in "inflation calculators" .... any data, sufficiently tortured, will tell you whatever you want it to .....
 
My 1994 Gun Digest shows the MSRP on a blued GP100 to be about $400.
 

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the 22-250 was just barely out of wildcat status back in the early 1980's .... and I never saw one in the wild until the 1990's .....
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I always figured a round was out of wildcat status when a major maker offered factory ammo for it.

I bought my first .22-250 back in 73 or 74, and while it happened to be a custom Mauser built by a local smith, it shot 3/4" groups (off a rolled up field jacket on the hood of a truck) with Remington factory 55gr sp that I bought at a department store.

Maybe they didn't get out to your area for a couple of decades, but I can assure you that in the Northeast they were in use and very well liked well before the 90s.

Oh, and as to the cost of things, that Mauser .22-250, with a Douglas #2 sporter barrel, Bishop stock, and a Weaver K8 (fine crosshairs) cost me $140. I spent another $20 on a Timney trigger and a scope safety. The price was extremely reasonable, but the COST was an entire summer of odd jobs to get that much cash, fortunately at the time, I was still riding a bicycle, so the cost of gas didn't eat into my savings. :D
 
Actually, I purchased a Remington 700 22-250 in late 1982, and I believe it was pre-owned. A couple of gun stores in my area regularly sold cartridges for it and I even purchased a cheap, set of Lee reloading dies for it because it was so darned expensive to shoot! I shot it quite a bit (once I was reloading for it), but sold it several years later. I couldn't get more than about 2, maybe 3 reloads on the brass since it deformed so much.
 
I got a small thrill when I found the original receipt from the M686-3 I bought in 1997... $325. But like so many others, during that time in my life, $325 was a sizeable investment.

I don't think you can touch any pre-lock S&W revolver in like-new condition for anything less than $500 now... and probably more $ than that in most places. of course there are always folks on here that seem to find deals a lot better than I can!
 
guns have pretty much been stabil in price no? in regards how much they cost visavi how much people made

roughly a months salary for a mid range priced rifle over the years, even back then there were other cheaper stuff, military surplus and more high end stuff
 
I can't remember what it was called, but I opened a thread about a month ago that looked at something similar.

I was asking people to give me the prices of guns back in the day and the price of the same guns now and compared the relative prices taking inflation into account.

From the small sample size I had it seemed that many firearms were cheaper now, relative to past times. But not all. It was not far off 50-50 with some guns costing more now.
 
Cool pic 45. I found a newspaper from 1973 recently. Indianapolis Star. The Bobby Knight show was advertised. His picture in the add looked much different than current images. $3000.00 full size Ford and Chevy cars. The paper is in some stuff that is packed up now, soon to be sorted. I will take pics of any gun ads. I remember gun ads in the paper back then. I should have some Field and Stream mags from God knows when. They were my Grandfather's. I would read Tapps Tipps, an the fishing stuff as a child.
 
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