Primer Shortage-Reality or Not

[Cholla]

4 hours ago, Hendo said:

Sorry, been a long day. I went back and reread my post that you quoted and was thinking "I didn't even say primers. Then I reread my post again and there wasn't any words with an "f" in them.

 

It's been a long day....

 

Translation: There ain't no "effing" primers. "effiing" being slang for the F-word meaning to fornicate. 

[Hendo]

1 hour ago, Cholla said:

Translation: There ain't no "effing" primers. "effiing" being slang for the F-word meaning to fornicate. 

Yeah yeah, I screwed up.

[Warden Callaway]

15 hours ago, John Kloehr said:

Spell "primers." Hint: There ain't no "f" in "primers."

 

We use to kind of have joke club. When we got together it was pretty much non-stop joke telling.  The "f" in "primers" is a parody of a joke that the punch line is,  "There is no "f" in zucchini."  The joke had a lady asked a produce manager for zucchini and wasn't taking his answer. 

 

[Sedalia Dave]

On 11/29/2020 at 11:30 PM, John Boy said:

There is no legislation, the same with Swiss black powder and the same with Wano, now marketed by Graf and Sons and KIK,. distributed by Powder Inc before KIK stopped making BP with the last import lot in 2010.  All the international primer manufacturers have to do is connect with US distributors ... and if they had their smart socks on would be doing it now, like Graf does for Wolf ammo  ... https://www.grafs.com/wolf-ammunition-primers

http://bulletin.accurateshooter.com/2008/08/sources-for-wolf-russian-primers-grafs-pvi-wideners/

Word says there is no shortage of Wolf, S&B and Russian primers in Europe and Canada

 

There is no shortage in Europe because almost all of Europe shut down completely for several months due to Covid.  No manufacturing, no sales, nada. Unlike the US, people in Europe cannot start panic buying firearms because it takes months of paperwork just to be able to buy a firearm. With everything shut down no paperwork is being processed so there is no sudden increase in gun owners or a sudden demand for more ammunition. Europe has nothing like the Second Amendment to protect their right to defend themselves. 

 

When Europe went into lockdown due to Covid exports of ammunition and primes ceased as Europe doesn't even remotely consider the firearms business as essential.

 

All the above is pretty much true for Canada as well. The process to become a firearms owner is long and tedious which pretty much eliminates panic buying.

[John Kloehr]

1 hour ago, Warden Callaway said:

 

We use to kind of have joke club. When we got together it was pretty much non-stop joke telling.  The "f" in "primers" is a parody of a joke that the punch line is,  "There is no "f" in zucchini."  The joke had a lady asked a produce manager for zucchini and wasn't taking his answer. 

 

I originally heard it about someone ordering chocolate at an ice cream parlor.

[Waddy]

All the primers you might ever want on gunbroker. Just be ready to pay the piper.  The problem is price gouging and nothing else

[Bugler]

Seems like the perfect storm to me............if you don't already have you aren't getting.

I know many shooters in a number of disiplines that aren't competing simply because they cannot re-supply. I may be one of them soon enough.

 

Bugler

[John Boy]

With the situation of lack of production, believed it was time to inventory the drawer of 22 rim fires ... totally amazed what was in the drawer ,,, blanks, shorts, longs, long rifles, reloads, both smokeless and black powder, WRM’s and in the back, collectibles that I moved to the collectibles cabinet including a box of Remington High speed shorts worth $174.  Productive Morning

[Lazy Eeyour]

A gun shop near me gets in a pallet of loaded ammunition every once in a while. At one box per day it is gone in 2 days. At that rate of sales why would they ship primers other than in loaded ammunition. It seems that Europe is shut down so we are dependent on USA manufacture. Hell, even bullets are hard to find. Blue Bullet has a delay of 14-18 weeks. It does not pay manufactures to add lines because when the current factors decline current sales will just be lost future sales until every thing returns to average.

 

[John Kloehr]

On 12/11/2020 at 2:40 AM, Waddy said:

All the primers you might ever want on gunbroker. Just be ready to pay the piper.  The problem is price gouging and nothing else

If the supply is getting diverted to resellers on GunBroker rather than hitting retail channels, that is price gouging and is illegal under CoViD legislation (just like for toilet paper).

 

But if this is old stock coming out of some dude's basement, even if he sold it to some pawn sleaze so he could make rent, then it is an auction and the going price.

 

The difference is in taking stock that would have gone to retail and jacking it up by diverting it from the  intended destination versus being the only available option... Like with Enron, ship the energy out of California and then sell it back to California at an inflated price because they have no available electricity.

 

The primers I bought at the beginning of this year were from a pawn shop, I hope whoever sold them made their rent that month; and even though I bought them on GunBroker, they were still at a sane price. The prices I'm seeing now? Hope whoever needed to make rent now raked whatever pawn shop over the coals and got a fair cut of the going price.

 

Frankly, panic is showing and buyers need to take a breath. A short delay on buying by even a small percentage of buyers will cause prices to drop.

 

In the ideal scenario, Enron would have lost a fortune (it's investor's money) if the customers just turned off all their lights for a couple of days; if they had just said NO!

 

And if new production is getting diverted to gougers... that would be at the manufacturer or distributer or even coming in the warehouses at the retail level and they are getting auctioned at GunBroker instead? That should be brought to the attention of the DOJ:

 

https://www.justice.gov/coronavirus

 

On edit: While I think there is some profiteering going on (general opinion of Pawn), Federal publicly stated all primer production is going to ammo until the demand drops; you can get Federal ammo with a few weeks delay at MSRP without paying auction markups. After demand gets satisfied, ammo re-manufacturers are next in line for primers. Retail primers are last in line.  While I do see an issue with Federal making ammo with Federal primers so reman does not get primers to make ammo which would reduce demand for Federal ammo... Not quite the same thing as consumers still have available just as many rounds of ammo based on primer production; just not cowboy ammo.