A friend owned a sporting goods store in the late 50's and closed it up in the 60's. He asked myself and another friend if we wanted any of the "junk" he didn't bother selling, and we both got a really nice counter top Remington ammunition display case. They have two sliding glass doors, and are sheet metal cases with shelves built in. Above the doors is a pretty, colorful Remington logo. It was a good place to store old ammo I never planned to shoot, and it fit on top if one of my safes and just hung over each side a few inches. Easy to access, but sometimes tough to find a particular box if it's buried in the back of one of the shelves. So far anything I've opened to look at has stayed in very nice shape, and my finished basement is dry and pretty much the same temperature all year round.
Not trying to be argumentative, but I'm not seeing the point you're making. It seems that you're saying if you go out tomorrow, buy an 90-year-old box of ammunition, then store it in your ammo case for a few years, when you open it up it'll be in perfect condition. If that's the case, sorry, but I know better than that.
Tim
I'm not saying I know what the condition of the ammo is. But I do know the external condition looks great and no signs of anything major wrong since the brass isn't turning dark, and no signs of anything major happening that would tell me the powder is eroding the cases. Since I have no plans to shoot this old ammo I'm not trying to say it's good to shoot. But for collectible ammo boxes and rounds inside need to look good or it's pretty worthless.
I owned enough old ammo to know one thing, it all looks good until it isn't. It doesn't matter how you store it, the only thing that matters is how someone else stored it and how it was manufactured. Case necks split when they decide to split, and powder deterioration is probably affected as much by chemical composition as temperature. Bob Bell wrote an article for handloaders Digest about a 150 lb can of World War II surplus 4895 that he had. He bought it right after the war and shot most of it, what was left sat in the can in his parents old barn in central Pennsylvania for 40 some years. He said the powder was as good then as it was when he bought it. I've had ammo that wasn't quite 40 years old it was suffering from powder decomposition.
One thing about powder, ammunition makers always seem to want to use his little powder as possible, so if you hold the cartridge close to your ear and shake It you can usually hear the powder rattle, if some cartridges rattle and some don't, it's almost guaranteed that the ones that don't the powder is clumping and going bad. I've come to the conclusion, that if you're buying ammo to collect it, the best thing to do is to just pull the bullets, dump the power, and reseat the bullets. At some point, that powder is going to go bad and ruin the cases. I don't think you can avoid it.
Tim
