Words to live by.

Walmart still has empty shelves in Midlothian.

I've been in busness making ammo since 2007, and been through 3 of these shortages now (this one being my 3rd). This one is definitly the worst one. Ammo and ammo components are unique items. Ammo is an inelastic good, meaning that even if the price goes up, people will still buy it (like cigarettes and alcohol.) I have seen my costs on components go up more than I have ever seen. Plus, many suppliers I buy from limit you to the amount you can buy, even when they have plenty of inventory. During shortages, powder companies mainly ship their powder in 1# containers, for 2 reasons. They can serve more people with 8- 1# jugs instead of 1- 8# keg. And most importantly, they make more money on 1# jugs. It is often $3 to $7 more per pound of powder when you have to buy it by the single pound jugs instead of in a keg or 45-50 pound container. It takes 4 items to make ammo- brass, bullets, powder and primers. All 4 of these items have increased in price, some increased a lot! I have tried to keep my pricing at sane levels. I'd rather shear a sheep forever, than skin him only once. That's how I look at it. The sad thing is I hoped pricing on components would come back down after the 2008 shortage, and they didn't come down. So, I don't see ammo components reducing in cost that much, until the market is fully supplied and stocked again. Even then, pricing will remain similar. This is just a little insight to this so far. But I do see items coming back on shelves and inventory remaining in stock longer than it did a few months ago.

I'll stick with my opinion that if you are buying ammo simply to resell at a profit you are the problem. If you are paying $0.25/round for 22LR, you are the problem.

If you are buying ammo for your personal use, good for you for being able to find it.

There's a huge difference in buying something at a good price and selling it for a profit; buying every lot you can off the shelf and selling it at an inflated price to people that do not have the ability to wait for the ammo truck when it arrives at the store.

I may not have the ability to purchase every gallon of milk, but it was a comparison. Would you not have a problem with a group of people waiting on delivery trucks, buying every gallon of milk, and then reselling after 5 for double the price to those that had to work when the shipments came in?

The ammo shortage is a myth. Large scale ammo producers are reporting that they are making as much or more ammo as they ever have. It was a scare that caused in increase in demand, although it wasn't really a demand, it was people looking to stock up. That would have blown over had people realized the gov't isn't going to take away your .22 LRs. Problem is, others saw it as a money making opportunity to buy out everything they can get their hands on and sell at inflated prices. That does not equate to an "ammo" shortage. The temporary "scare" is what initially drove the panic and "ammo shortage". Its the people continuing to clean off the shelves and reselling at ridiculous prices is what is dragging this on. There's no shortage of ammo, there's an increase in middle men and brokers.

If you bought before the scare and are selling for a profit now, congrats, that is capitalism at its finest. Taking advantage of people that cannot wait in line as soon as the truck unloads or those that do not have connections, is not capitalism.

In the end the greedy ones will get what they have coming. They can't keep these prices elevated forever and in the end they will be stuck with inventory of overpriced ammo that they can't sell. I'm a believer in the saying that bears and bulls make money, pigs get slaughtered!

After bobo got re-elected and Sandy Hook, I know alot of folks got caught with their britches down around their ankles.

Others went into full panic mode. Folks who never ever thought about owning a firearm previously, ran out and bought knowing nothing.

The questions they asked (and I'm glad they did) left me shaking my head.

"Can I shoot 45-70 thru this .45ACP I just bought?" .380 thru a .38 SPL? There were so many more. I really hope nobody got hurt or worse.

Now what I see is the few camping out in front of Academy. Word on the streets has it, some of those in lawnchairs are CTD employee's.........

For those in the oilfield, this ammo deal is just like the guar issue last year.

Historically guar has been less than $1/lb. When it got over $1/lb everybody complained.

Last year there were reports in India about a huge guar shortage. All of a sudden a ton of people saw opportunities to make money. You had guar suppliers popping up everywhere scooping up every lb of guar they could buy in India. At the time it was tough to buy guar in India. But once the guar made it to the U.S. it was everywhere. I had a much harder time finding guar when it was $0.78/lb than when it was $6/lb. We could have bought all the guar we wanted last year as long as we were willing to pay the price. A shortage is when you can't find it regardless of what the price is.

Thankfully we committed to a huge volume of material at the end of 2011 before the prices skyrocketed. We only had to buy a little here and there at inflated prices just to make sure inventory didn't run too low. Those that invested early made money. But you had others that got greedy. One large service company bought millions of lbs for $10-$11/lb in an attempt to remove it from the market. Soon after the prices dropped. They got greedy and it backfired.

I'm proud to say that my company held its pricing based on what we paid for the material as opposed to market price. We could have sold for 3-4x what we paid for it to certain companies. Instead we took care of our longterm loyal customers. We left millions on the table.

Today there is still guar on the market from last year because no one would buy it at the prices it was purchased it for. Several of these "guar brokers" have disappeared many are probably bankrupt, all because they got greedy.

The same will happen with people buying and reselling ammo today. Eventually people will realize its a hoax, there's no shortage, only an increase in middle men.

I've been a dealer since 2009 & this is definitely the worst "shortage" I've ever experienced. There are a number of factors at play here, a few that have already been mentioned in this thread. I don't think the manufacturers were ready production-wise for the panic buying that occurred after the November election. Then Sandy Hook happened, and the political & media frenzy that ensued regarding guns & the 2nd Ammendment was a tipping point that brought demand to an all time. Production wasn't ready or able to meet this hunger for product, and companies were hesitant to ramp up production & raw material supplies when there was so much uncertainty as to what Washington was going to do.

A final factor that is definitely playing into the equation here has to do with local gun stores pretty much buying up whatever they can find at the retail level for resale in their own stores. This IS happening, as a lot of these stores are "Mom & Pop" outfits that purchase through distributors, not directly from the manufacturers. The distributors are allocating backorders & are placing limits as to who gets what at any given time. So, since these stores can't get ammo from their traditional source, and the manufacturers aren't accepting any new accounts (pretty much across the board right now), the stores are left to make deals with warehouse/stocking workers at your local WalMart, Dick's, Academy, etc. I'm not saying that this is happening at every single retailer, but there are some who are getting kickbacks for notifying a local store that they just got ABC ammo in stock...

My $.02...

Agree with the above, everything else you wrote is your personal opinion and inconsistent with both capitalism and the laws of supply and demand.

It never fails. When others sell their stuff they want a "MARKET PRICE", but when I sell something I'm "PRICE GOUGING"! Let the market work. I was unprepared this time and have made a decent profit on recently acquired ammo. I didn't force anyone to buy from me just like I wasn't forced to buy anything. If you don't like the price, keep your mouth shut and move on. I know many will not like what I said, but it is what it is.

havnt bout ammo for 4-5 months now...they can sit in the safe for those kinda prices. bought some arrows though...

Yep, me too.

Though ammo is on the shelves again. I've picked up 3 boxes of .308 and plenty of 30-30 recently at normal pricing.

Now that you've had your rant do you feel better? I can't think of any changes I wanna make to my first post so I thought I'd just repost it again.

I was at an auction in Llano saturday and a brick (1,000 rds) sold for a 135.00. All I could do is shake my head.

Dumb da dumb dumb

I go to Academy to often for myself and the kiddo's. I cannot help but check out the ammo or lack there of. The guys that work there say it comes every Monday, Wednesday and Friday and the Resellers are stacked waiting in line before they open.

Unfortunately I have a job where I cannot hang out at Academy in the AM like some others. Down to one box of 40 cal and it sucks!

Surely you are not against profits. The company you have in your signature is in business to make a profit. They don't provide the services they provide just to break even, they are in it for the profits. I guess your opinion is that they are pieces of SH!T also because I know you're not a hypocrite.

I don't see an argument against profits, but people do react negatively when they feel that are being taken advantage of.

There are only a couple of shades of grey between supplying a product at a profit and usury. You will see folks complaining rather loudly about bottled water selling for $50. each after a hurricane, so the definition of excrement is in the eye of the beholder.

I think I was quite clear with my post. I never said I was against profit. Where does it say that in my post?

If you are one of the carpetbaggers that stand in line at Walmart and Academny to hoard the ammo and resell it at a higher "profit" I still feel the same way about you or anyone else out there that's doing it.

Usury is an illegally high rate of interest chaged by a lender. Usury is defined under applicable federal / state law. It has nothing to do with return on investment; buying low and selling high (or selling "too high" which appears to be the topic).

I don't buy and sell ammo. I buy it to use. But I don't see any difference between a guy who loads up on ammo at Walmart or wherever and hopes to sell it for amprofit, vs a guy who buys stocks and hopes to sell them for a profit. Either one may make a lot, a little or no money; either may loose a lot of money also. Should we have our Dear Leader decide what we can do to make money or how much money we can make / profit we can make/ etc? I sure don't!

interestingly enough, last time I went to wal-mart the guy at the sporting goods counter asked me if I would like some .45, which I jumped on. I couldn't believe they had any in the middle of the day. He said that some of the stores starting holding back ammo because "re-sellers" were lining up in the am and hitting the stores in the delivery order....so the stores started waiting them out and not putting out the ammo until later on. He saw me look in the case and shake my head, so he offered it up. 300 rounds of .45 at walmart prices - woohoo!

It appears that Walmart doesn't agree with the way you see it.

And just to educate you, regulators would not allow you to clean out the shelves of a stock so you could in turn sell it to the public at a higher price.

Walmart's policies have nothing to do with the statutory definition of usury.

As to its policies restricting ammo sales to no more than 3 boxes and/or waiting out the ammo "investors", Walmart is free (subject generally to anti-discrimination laws,etc) to sell, not sell, or restrict the sell of products as it sees fit. That is the broad freedom of contract that I celebrate (and a reason I buy my ammo there). It could do what Cheaper than Dirt has done. Nothing illegal about that either, but it sure ruffles a lot of feathers.

And a person can buy the entire stock of a company. After a certain percentage ownership though, there are multiple federal rules and regulations that apply. But publically traded companies are taken private regularly.

If you mean 100% of a particular product or good, there may be regulations to prevent monopolization, but unless you are the Hunt Brothers, that has no bearing on the day to day "investment" or buying /selling practices of us. I haven't seen reports of Nelson or Bunker Hunt going from Walmart to Walmart seeking to "corner" the ammo market. Obviously that could not happen: too many walmarts and too many other stores that sell it. Maybe if they were buying and taking private all of the ammo manufacturers in the US.

Nope I won't keep my mouth shut. The reason you want me to keep my mouth shut is because you know what you are and you don't like others to bring it up. Your the type that "does it" to their own kind and you feel bad about it. Not enough to stop, but bad enough to know what you are.

This has absolutely zero to do with usury. You're way out in left field.

And yes, you absolutely could buy all of the stock of a company thinking you could sell it for more back to the public. Unless you created value in between, it wouldn't work.

Let me educate you how it works:

Your own buy orders wouldn't trigger a complete buyout until you were way, way beyond the mean value a stock is trading at, or the market's collective perceived value of the company.

So to begin with, you would have overpaid for the stock.

Now try to sell it: If you're asking more than the original collective market's value for that company on a per/share basis, you're not going to find buyers.

Some of you lack very basic knowledge on capital markets and how they work. You can't just buy up something and demand a higher price if the market doesn't deem it worth that price. You'll be left holding the bag.

In the example of ammo, people buying it up are obviously succeeding in unloading it at the higher prices, thus the market has spoken and the price of ammo on the shelves at Academy is below the fair market value of the ammo. Thus, what we're going through.

I will just weigh in with some fundamental business school terms and clarification I see thrown around....

First of all in business "Buying low and selling high" refers to buying an asset when you perceive its future value to be more than its current asking price.

So if you bought 3,000rnds of .223 and 100pmags in November of last year and sold them for a 400% profit when the craze hit; then you infact BOUGHT LOW AND SOLD HIGH!

If you purchase a good through a regulated (privately or by law regulated)at current retail value then sold it at a 400% mark up then you are by definition a scalper.

There is a difference between investing and scalping; such as when I was in high school and the big yearly rival football game that always sold out. One man waiting in a lawn chair for 12hrs and bought EVERY SINGLE ticket for the home side reserved bleachers.....

Then turned around and demanded 3X what he paid for them from the parents and grand parents that wanted to see the game.

Now then was this guy a smart investor or a scalper?

We do have a some what free market country and I am a firm believer in buying low and selling high; however the phrase....

"Im not forcing them to pay that much, they are willfully doing so and im providing it and people can hate me if they want for making a buck!"

Is the exact same attitude of the people who own the "pay day loan" stores that charge 700% interest....