Sierra 2650R vs 2650C .338 Cal -- Blems?

[bobinpa]

I have a box of bullets that looks like it is bulk packed and possibly blems. They are .338 250 gr SMKs. On the side of the box it is hand written 2650R. Does that somehow designate them as blems or seconds? Does anyone know for sure? The bullets came with some other stuff I bought.
Edit to add: To those of you that have used blems, do they fly ok? Is the blem genuinely cosmetic or does it go deeper than that?

 

[Paul Hilgedick]

I have purchased and shot Sierra blems for 30 years. The way I buy them is at the Sierra factory in Sedalia Missouri. You tell them how many pounds you want and they put them in a paper bag. A lot of what I use them for is PD shooting. It takes a little sorting but I have never seen a difference compared to their first line bullets.

 

[MagnumManiac]

Blems are merely cosmetic and have zero influence on flight.
I used to buy box upon box of blem Accubonds to use for mid range F-class early on when it was just starting and bullet selection here was limited. The price was right also! Lol.
Shoot away, they will be fine.

Cheers.

 

[Whiskey_Zulu]

You probably already have your answer. They are probably seconds and they will fly just fine.You may want to sort them by ogive length to tighten up the group. As stated above, you buy them by the pound. About 10 pounds fit in a paper bag, but the bags have a tendency to tear or get a hole pocked in them so they put the heavy bags (or multiple bags) in a small square box. And I have noticed that the seconds have a "R" appended to the product number.

 

[bobinpa]

I did get answers but none were as specific as you. Thanks. That is what I was looking for. Based on what you said, what I have are blems. I'll give them a try.

 

[Bronco302]

Have shot a lot of Sierra blems and taken the tour several times. If you dig into why they are blems its a little more than just cosmetic. At the final bullet forming station samples are pulled and inspected, if the sample fails for any reason that batch is put in the seconds barrel, could be 100 to 500 bullets, if they have a bunch of these they will sometimes sort through them. One of the main inspection points is weight. At the time I was there I asked how much they had to be off to be rejected and they said 0.4 grains high or low so 0.8 spread. That was on the .223 69gr. SMK, don't know if that varies by size and weight of bullet or not. I've checked a lot of them and if they were kicked because they were under weight then most of them are under weight.

The ones I'd stay away from are the plastic tipped ones as there are a lot of them with the tip missing or broken. The hollow point SMK's will show some inconsistency in hollow point closure. There is a 1-3% unusable rate because of jacket issues or other problems.