I am a long time reloader and I can tell you the shortages started way before the last election. IMR 8208 has been nearly unobtanium for longer than 2 years, so has varget and a few others.
There have always been and always will be Brandon‘s and rumors of Brandon‘s. The nation is becoming quickly filled with them especially from the younger generation. What we have and what we do with what we have scares the snot out of them. Yes things started to ramp down in availability and up in price towards the last administrations term, my opinion,they were afraid of a Brandon. Again I have said in other posts of mine I’m glad I stocked up when I did. When this Brandon leaves there will sure to be another Brandon to pick up the line just like there is when somebody leaves in Al-Qaeda or those type of organizations. I guess we best get used to it and accept it as fact as sad as it is. Impossible to comprehend but there may be a day where we wish we just had this Brandon back. As far as price in my local area, Franklin Pennsylvania, the last time I looked and that was late winter early spring powder was $40-$45 a pound and 8 pound jugs were 279.99. I did not buy any.
I do not disagree.
I know every Presidential Election results in tight supplies. In the last 6 months before this one I started buying. Figured I have at best 5 years left to try and be competitive. I pretty much have enough of what I need. Among that was multiple jugs of Varget which is what I use the most of. I learned from experience to keep a minimum of 2 years supplies so I just had to pick it up a bit. Took a little looking but all I have is at old prices. Some of it I got by trading what I no longer use.
Just left one (of two) LGS’s here in my town and there were several 1lb containers of BOTH Varget and H1000 priced at $48.95 on the shelves. Other powders such as H110, H335, LiL’ Gun etc were considerably less…
You have also not seen prices go up as fast as they have in the last couple of years either. I've been reloading since the early 80.s, so only about 40 of your 50 years. Maybe I am missing something, your experience certainly is greater than mine.
I shoot IBS score matches April 1st thru the end of this month. I have never seen such a low turnout of competitors as this year has produced. Lets face it it's a dying sport. I'm lucky because I bought a ton of shit years ago but I'm losing interest in competing. I'm looking to buy a Pro Street Hemi Cuda and be done with this shooting stuff.
I think you are absolutely correct. I've been buying, carefully, all through the supposed pandemic. There are no LGS's here anymore, just chain stores and one or two independents that sell many, many other products. If they had to rely on gun and reloading component sales to stay afloat they'd have closed their doors a long time ago.
Benchrest has always been esoteric.
And you think shooting is pricey......I like the idea though.
Fuel is next ... might want to have a rethink
