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Joe,
I sincerely hope you are right,last week I was with a top European cartridge manufacturer, he said that they would probably go up in price even further due to the U.S. Economy, the price of oil (manufacture of plastic wads needs oil).I said no way but he was insistant.Saying that Nobel have just increased prices and also Spanish Industrial giant UEE.So hold your breath boys we could be in for a rough ride.Two of my friends have already 'retired' and gone fishing.

If lead prices don't come down soon, I'm going to start buying Chinese made toys and squeeze the lead out.

Actually, the material costs involved in shotshells is probably a small percentage of the retail price. I bet transportation is starting to take a big bite.

Chuck- I'll bet transportation isn't just begining to take a huge cut. I'm sure it's been doing it for some time. Shot is ordered by the carload and sold by the bag. Ammunition is transported to the city of sale in trucks burning diesel. The railroad car is pulled by a locomotive burning diesel. The store is heated or cooled by electricity produced by burning oil.

What I'm so clumsily trying to illustrate is the impact of oil prices on shot and ammunition (and every thing else we do). Even if the price of lead fell dramaticly, the price of ammunition would remain high.

Cary

The cost of lead is certainly a minor factor in the recent rise in cost of factory ammo. At $35/bag for magnum shot and higher priced primers (powder & wads haven't changed much), it costs me $3.85 to load a box of 1 ounce shells. If I paid $50/bag, my cost would rise to $4.80/box. Over the last decade my handloads have gone up maybe $1/box; factory ammo jumped $3/box in the last year. Last I looked, WalMart was charging $7.74/box for AA's & STS and they don't carry the 1 ounce loads I want.

The ammo manufacturers forward buy commodities offering themselves some insulation and allowing them to delay implementing a price increase. As thier inventories were depleted and they had to start passing along the cost they did it in a short period of time rather than a long drawn out series of little jumps. The cost of lead in a box of shells is up about $2.60 in the last year. They have passed it and the rising cost of fuel and the oil based polymer plastics are probably the rest of the increase. I dont think the ammo companies are getting rich on this. If anything it erodes thier margins.

I deal in high volume purchasing of food and this is just like what is happening with the price of chicken. Simple put chicken is assembled out of grain and eggs. The cost of grain is skyrocketing and the chicken guys are hard pressed to pass along all of the increase without driving down demand by pricing themselves out of the market. They need to pass the increase in their raw materials but can't be cavalier about it...

Jeff

Don't worry about lead boys, its the other stuff you may have to shoot that is in short supply. Just think how crappy you'll feel shootin' steel from that expensive 28b damascus quail wand!
Ouch!

All this talk about banning lead. Trust me, 40 years from now we'll still be using lead in the Republic of Texas....

I was lucky enough to have a buddy (who had quit shooting trap years ago) give me 8 bags of shot last year for $50.00 when he was cleaning out his garage. Then his brother in law gave me three more bags. So, I never had to worry about it.... It's just like gasoline. It doesn't matter how much a gallon of gas costs to me. When I go and get gas, I buy $20.00 worth. That lasts me for close to a month. Since I retired, I hardly even drive, except for maybe once or twice a week. If it gets up to $10.00 a gallon, all they'll get is .......you guessed it.....$20.00. That's all they're going to get from me.....$20.00.