Slightly Ot: Federal Primer Availability?

[mobocracy]

I buy my Dillon stuff and most of my reloading supplies from a local dealer in town for all the usual "support your local dealer" reasons, in addition to him being competitive on prices, and a good guy. Primers from him are kind of a no-brainer vs. the high priced chains and HAZMAT fee mailorders.

For about the last two months, he's been totally out of Federal 150s (and now, Winchester LPs, too, at least as of a couple of weeks ago). He claims that no suppliers have them and no idea when he will get more of them. I live in Minnesota, former/current home of Federal/ATK operations and my reloading guy has Federal employees who shop there who say "Gee, we're making a ton of them..."

I'm really not trying to start a scarce primer conspiracy, either, but I have noticed that Federal 150s are out of stock at Midway with a "NO BACKORDER" addition, which (based on past calls to Midway) that they have accrued too many backorders relative to their expected shipment size.

Has anyone else run into this in your area? Or are you smarter than I am, and buy 5-10k at a time? I usually only buy 1-2k at a time, a practice I'm kind of regretting given the cost of 5k.

[Keith]

I started a thread about this in the revolver forum.

http://www.brianenos.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=41640

For what it's worth I was at Sheels in St. Cloud last weekend and they had some 150's. At least 1000 but they wanted $25 per 1000.

[rtr]

My local Sportsman's Warehouse was out of federal 205s for several weeks, the one in Denver only had 10K of them so I bought them all.

[mobocracy]

I started a thread about this in the revolver forum.

http://www.brianenos.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=41640

For what it's worth I was at Sheels in St. Cloud last weekend and they had some 150's. At least 1000 but they wanted $25 per 1000.

Wow! That's spendy. I saw that PowderValley had some in stock, so I bought 5k 150s and 5 lbs Blue Dot (which I was out of anyway, just to make the hazmat fee less painful).

[sargenv]

I was just at Widener's and they claim to have about 20k of the regular and 28k of the match 150's in stock. They also have 155k of the 155's, the Magnum large pistol in stock and 81k of the 155 magnum math primers.

T&T reloading lists them but does not have an amount of in stock.

Powder valley lists them as in stock also.

Vince

[mobocracy]

I was just at Widener's and they claim to have about 20k of the regular and 28k of the match 150's in stock. They also have 155k of the 155's, the Magnum large pistol in stock and 81k of the 155 magnum math primers.

T&T reloading lists them but does not have an amount of in stock.

Powder valley lists them as in stock also.

Vince

I just got my shipment of 5k 150s from Powder Valley. Fast shipping, I'm tempted to buy from them again if the cost with Hazmat is competitive, although I'm thinking I'd probably have to order at least 6 months all at once to make it worthwhile.

[Keith]

I stopped down at Gunstop today and he had at least 30,000 150's lying there. It was kind of a mess since he was in the middle of moving all the inventory to the new shop.

[mobocracy]

I stopped down at Gunstop today and he had at least 30,000 150's lying there. It was kind of a mess since he was in the middle of moving all the inventory to the new shop.

So he finally did get a new shipment in. Oh well, I need to go check out the new shop and get some die sets from him anyway..

[sargenv]

Yeah, around here, we tend to order as many primers as we can afford. I try to order 6-9 months worth of primers if I can since we can get the best deal in bulk. I have.. well, I have a lot. I hope that what I have will get me through next year. I also have enough if I decide to shoot the other divisions. I looked through my powder inventory and figure I have an adequate amount to get me through 2007 though I figure by year's end it will be time to start thinking about re-stocking. Occasionally people get rid of stuff they don't want locally and I'm only too happy to take it off their hands. If it won't work in my pistols, it will generally work very well in the shotgun loads I make. Oddly enough, Pistol and shotshell powders are in the same burn range.

I think the one thing I'll need to buy over the coming year is bullets, and unfortunately after the first it seems I'll be able to buy less than last year (Prices going up). Oh well.

Vince