How Much is Enough

alot of good comments.. Started buying decades ago... numbers are subjective at any given point.
Sell what's a Can of these worth.. now vs. later? vs. When SHTF
LC 7.62 Match, LC 5.56 Ball, TW 5.56 Ball, WRA 7.62 Ball, FA 30.06 Match, LC 30.06 Match,
45 ACP Match just curious... 30k SRP at the current rate.. another example
US dollars...past, present and futire...same with stocks, what will they be worth? Collected coins
long..long ago. It's gonna be what you can barter with more than anything. Not to be a "tin foil
hat" person what were seeing today is gonna be nothing, when people can not get to work, afford
food.. the basics..look-out.. current times is a preview of the future (I hope not)..The Government ain't
gonna help us..

-Snoopz
 
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wvsig said:
Sure it can. Ask the people who paid $700 for a case of 9mm. At any given point I can trade $$$ for goods and services. The value of the $$ is its purchasing power not just here but all over the world. The amount of those goods and services change. in 2019 $170 bought you a case of 9mm. Today it will get you 500 rounds but everyone selling bullets is still taking cash.

The same cannot be said for bullets. They only have value to a certain segment of the population and they may or may not be willing to pay what I think they are worth. It is a much more restrictive market. You are not buying a new car with brass and lead. You are not buying a house will bullets. You have to take them and convert them to cash to buy those things so yes your $$$ are tied up in bullets.
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Just think of all those dollars you have tied up in that truck and house.

Just seems a silly way to look at it.

When the dollar crashes, your ability to trade for things will be better with bullets than worthless paper.

But it’s all good ….
 
Ammo Price is all over the place, never goes down and the stuff doesn't really go bad. More is always the right answer, ain't like it's hard to sell if you bought too much. Talk to anyone with an ak74 and ask if they bought enough 7n6
 
Ok, question. Hunting calibers, how much is enough? Haha. I don’t need 5k rounds for my 243 or 30-30 or my grandpaw’s 270 that I inherited. I used to only keep 2 or 3 boxes on hand for each. If I ran out then I’d just go to the store and pick up some more. But I found myself buying a box or 2 every time I go somewhere that had it decently priced. I buy the 2 box limit every time I step into a Walmart. Most of the time it’s 243, 270 or if they have the 4 pack of 12 or 20 gauge shells. So, for the hunters, how much do you keep stocked?
 
I know a good bit of folks who shoot 30-30 and none of them reload, but they know I do, so they always saved their brass for me. Back when I could get H335 for $15/lb, LRPs for $25/1000 and Hornady 150gr FPs for $10/100, I went on a 30-30 reloading binge.

Don’t think I’ll exhaust my supply. If I do, things have gone really sideways.
 
All I can get , more than I will ever shoot. My wife said the other day that there was something in the garage. Shelf with45 and 38 ammo broke and collapsed onto the shelf below. No ammo was injured in this collapse 🥴. Took a while to sort out and replace the shelves

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Charlie said:
There was a show several years ago that examined the preparations of a bunch of different people and described the situations they are seeking to survive. The different people were prepping against such things as nuclear war, social chaos, the breakdown of the infrastructure, mass starvation, foreign invasion, epidemics, and a whole bunch of other crises. They would prep against one threat based on what they predicted would happen in the future but would generally not be prepared for other threats
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Sounds like doomsday preppers. The “experts” they used, I forget, turned out to be a normal supply company too.
 
Have gun-will travel said:
All I can get , more than I will ever shoot. My wife said the other day that there was something in the garage. Shelf with45 and 38 ammo broke and collapsed onto the shelf below. No ammo was injured in this collapse 🥴. Took a while to sort out and replace the shelves

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Kinda looks like your collection of bourbon shelves. Better hope they don’t collapse. My selves in the garage were like that until I bought those wheeled stackable tool boxes by Ridgid from Home Depot.

I consolidated my calibers in both pistol and rifle for ease in buying and accounting. rarely shoot. That number will never be reached financially but 10k pistol, 25k rifle, and 15k .22LR would be nice to have in these political ant gun times. Ammo is not coming down ever again. I need way more shotgun shells than the couple grand I have now.
 
so when teotwawki happens and you need your hunting cartridges to buy you that extra 300yards over the marauders trying to take your property... is 1-2 boxes still enough?
 
"Ammo is not coming down ever again" - .22 is finally coming down (0.06 for automatch at WallyWorld this week), but in general you're right.
 
When I have to build a 2nd pier additional pier under the joist of my storage room, I'll rethink my stash buying.
 
Depends on what you're stocking up for. Want to avoid the scares and shortages, or prepping for poop hitting the fan stuff?

Avoiding shortages? How much do you shoot in a year? Figure out that number, and stock up 2x that. Now you have a 2 year ammo buffer. Shortages and scares are no big deal.

Poop hitting the fan? 500-1000 rounds should do it. Anything more is just ammo collecting.
 
RedneckFur said:
Poop hitting the fan? 500-1000 rounds should do it. Anything more is just ammo collecting.
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I feel like that is an extremely low number. Would you go to war with only 500-1000 rounds? I think not

I assume that the average soldier only carries 200-300 rounds but if it hits the fan in our on country or your back yard, I would think you may want more.
 
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Fair points. I think of SHTF as partly hunting for protein and partly self defense. If truly SHTF and you might never see rounds in a store again, are you going to blow a couple thousand a year shooting at paper/steel? And how many firefights are you likely to experience AND survive? 1000 rounds might be slim to go to war with, but in SHTF without vehicles, gas etc. how am I transporting a stockpile? Not agreeing or disagreeing with anyone, just musing.
 
It’s really not about SHTF, it’s about buying the dips and avoiding the peaks.
I do expect there to be a “sin” tax applied to ammunition eventually, and think of that as causing an extended peak.
 
But cost is a less severe concern than availability, at least in my mind. If it gets pricey, I can cut back on booze, fast food or bullets but I can keep shooting some. When SHTF, I can't get anymore bullets, full stop. So I look at stockpiling more as a safety precaution than just avoiding peak prices (but like others seem to think, we're honestly probably at a shallow valley at the moment).
 
Mathieu18 said:
But cost is a less severe concern than availability, at least in my mind. If it gets pricey, I can cut back on booze, fast food or bullets but I can keep shooting some. When SHTF, I can't get anymore bullets, full stop. So I look at stockpiling more as a safety precaution than just avoiding peak prices (but like others seem to think, we're honestly probably at a shallow valley at the moment).
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If we define SHTF as there being no ammunition available from either primary or secondary sources (ie the store or second hand) then you need to do the math on how much you want to have in that scenario. In my case I’d expect to be using more 22lr per month for hunting, but less than I currently shoot for fun. It turns out that I need much less ammo for SHTF than I currently use for fun, so if I plan for 4 or 5 years at “fun” shooting rates I’m well covered for both price fluctutions and potential SHTF.

I also stock some primers, powder and lead along with casting and reloading equipment. Don’t expect to ever travel with all of it in a SHTF situation, but it does help level out the price fluctuations and gives me flexibility vs buying factory ammo.
 
Have gun-will travel said:
That shelf is 2 feet deep and 4 ft wide. Way to much weight on 3/8 partical board. The second shelf is the one that collapsed

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RedneckFur said:
Depends on what you're stocking up for. Want to avoid the scares and shortages, or prepping for poop hitting the fan stuff?

Avoiding shortages? How much do you shoot in a year? Figure out that number, and stock up 2x that. Now you have a 2 year ammo buffer. Shortages and scares are no big deal.

Poop hitting the fan? 500-1000 rounds should do it. Anything more is just ammo collecting.
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Crankbait said:
I feel like that is an extremely low number. Would you go to war with only 500-1000 rounds? I think not

I assume that the average soldier only carries 200-300 rounds but if it hits the fan in our on country or your back yard, I would think you may want more.
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Chances are that survive the first round of SHTF there will be tons of "battle field" pick up ammo. People love to fantasize that they are going to live long enough to shoot thousands of rounds if everything goes wrong when IMHO the reality is that you will spend more time hiding and avoiding confrontation. Shooting someone will be an act of last resort because it will make you a target.
 
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For general use calibers for my pistols and rifles, I buy as much as I can as often as I can. For my hunting rifles, I have far less because I don’t hunt that much. A few hundred steel shotgun shells for waterfowl or so. The way I see it, if there is a true teotwawki scenario, then all my ammo is “hunting” ammo.
 
Have gun-will travel said:
All I can get , more than I will ever shoot. My wife said the other day that there was something in the garage. Shelf with45 and 38 ammo broke and collapsed onto the shelf below. No ammo was injured in this collapse 🥴. Took a while to sort out and replace the shelves

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You could sell a good bit of your ammo stash and it might give you enough money to buy some 3/4” plywood to make shelves.
 
Anyone else “spread” their stash out into a couple places for various reasons … from weight distribution to risk management (if something happens at one spot all your eggs aren’t there)?
 
Crankbait said:
I feel like that is an extremely low number. Would you go to war with only 500-1000 rounds? I think not

I assume that the average soldier only carries 200-300 rounds but if it hits the fan in our on country or your back yard, I would think you may want more.
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Not in the slightest.
 
Have gun-will travel said:
@wvsig Let's see your stash . Would love to see your bumped up Numbers
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Lets just say when I got my insurance policy from Eastern the $5k of ammo and reloading supplies rider that is included was not enough to cover the ammo and reloading supplies. ;)
 
RedneckFur said:
Not in the slightest.
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I reckon by reading the other comments I just assumed when crap hits the fan meaning war. But it could also mean if there was an ammo hiatus and you couldn’t find it anywhere. Then it would all depend on how much ammo you would need to get through that. I don’t shoot tournaments anymore. I also only shoot maybe once or twice a year for pleasure since my daughters were born. And if I do shoot, it’s shotgun and 22. I’ve never been one to go out and just shoot my 9mm or AR. I just never seen much joy in it. Skeet shooting on the other hand, if I had the time and money I could go every weekend.

But getting back on subject, I reckon there’s different meanings to crap hitting the fan. And it’s up to the individual needs and wants and expectations and comforts.
 
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Note to self: buy more buckshot.
 
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I used to buy ammo every week. Now I am balancing that with food and other supplies that may be scarce. Can’t eat bullets. I likely have ’enough’ of all the rifle ammo I need. Pistol may be a little light, but in a truly bad time I am carrying a rifle as my primary tool. So I am doing the food, first aid and non gas/electric powered tool or useful thing program. I need to lay up some more wood. And maybe build a wood shed.
 
CZfool68 said:
I used to buy ammo every week. Now I am balancing that with food and other supplies that may be scarce. Can’t eat bullets. I likely have ’enough’ of all the rifle ammo I need. Pistol may be a little light, but in a truly bad time I am carrying a rifle as my primary tool. So I am doing the food, first aid and non gas/electric powered tool or useful thing program. I need to lay up some more wood. And maybe build a wood shed.
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What tools are you liking? Been thinking the same there. Need more food…
 
Mathieu18 said:
What tools are you liking? Been thinking the same there. Need more food…
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I grabbed an new hatchet a while back. Going to buy an axe this week I think. I’ve got most of what I need, but filling in some gaps. I have gas and electric chainsaws and tools, but if energy keeps going where it is using a hand tool makes sense a lot of times. I could use a few more hand saws, and maybe a few more small gardening tools.
 
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