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rotor wrote:People that claim they won't buy anything now at expanded prices because they have plenty on stock already are "prepared" or hoarders or whatever you want to call it. This is no different than buying stock, you hope to buy low and sell high. For me it is usually buy high and sell low. Gold has dropped $600 an ounce recently. Sirs ( and madams), this is capitalism and there is nothing wrong with it. You take a gamble when you buy high hoping to sell even higher. The Hunt brothers did this years ago trying to corner the silver market and I believe they lost their shirts. The alternative to all of this is that some government worker demands that the price is set by the government and then there will be NO supply at all (remember the first Arab oil embargo).
On the positive side, as a reloader, supply is picking up. Primers, powder and bullets are becoming much more available which means that they are not being tied up in the commercial market and that most likely will be available at lower prices. What has surprised me the most was the shortage of rimfire ammo. Are all of the big companies converting their efforts to centerfire ammo and away from rimfire because that's where the money is? The shortage will be over when rimfire is readily available. And then all of us will be hoarders again ( or just call us prepared).

VMI77 wrote:

Cedar Park Dad wrote: Thats an artificial inflation of the market.

No, it's not. It's a clearing function taking place because the market is being artificially constrained for political reasons --because Americans have been indoctrinated to believe that it is somehow immoral to raise prices when demand greatly exceeds supply.

K.Mooneyham wrote:I was trying to make sense, and I probably didn't. So here is an example. Say there is a hurricane, and an area gets hit hard. Someone goes to their local Wal-Mart outside that hard-hit area and buys a bunch of bottled water for 25 cents a bottle. They buy cases and cases of it, and take it to the hurricane area and resell it for 50 cents a bottle. That is fine because they helped move those goods from a place of plenty to a place of scarcity, and they deserve to make money doing so. They not only provided the product but also a service. I don't call them "gougers" or anything of the sort. The people in the hurricane area might not even have the water without folks buying it and bringing it in. But the "Gunbroker ammo crews" are the equivalent of buying all the bottled water they can get their hands on, but then only selling a couple of bottles a day and charging $1.00 a bottle, even though they have pallets of it. They would have still made money the other way without creating artificial scarcity to do it. Maybe a bad example because water is so common, but still I hope this made sense.

K.Mooneyham wrote:I have no problem with retailers raising the price of ammunition due to the scarcity of it, not even prices at More-Expensive-than-Gold. So be it, they are likely paying more from the wholesellers and so they raise their prices to maintain their profits. And I have nothing to say about "hoarders" one way or the other, though I'm guessing a few folks have gotten to the silly level with the amount they have in their garages, etc. However, curse me for a "collectivist" if you want (though I am most certainly nothing of the sort), but its the "Gunbroker ammo crews" that I'm most irritated with. Call them "speculators", fine, call them whatever you want. But I'm not feathering their nests with my money. If they were simply trying to make a little extra on it, eh, whatever. That would be a market example because they would be earning money getting products from locations with stock to locations with scarcity. For example, the guys at the gun show are pricing their stuff higher than "normal", but still at a point that will result in the sale of the ammo. But these "buy it and stick it on Gunbroker" types are asking FAR over what that ammo is worth, even now, and that is evidenced by comparing it to places like More-Expensive-Than-Gold and the gun show prices. Its not a crime for these "ammo crews" to do this NOR DO I WANT IT TO BE A CRIME, so do NOT accuse me of "wanting a law against that": I DON'T. But, they are also creating ARTIFICIAL scarcity. REAL scarcity is caused by the increase in new owners, government purchases, law enforcement purchases, shortages in raw material, worry over future political shenanigans, etc., all the myriad of things that any market might experience. But buying it up, peddling it on "Gunbroker" a little at a time and pricing it out of the reach of almost everyone in the hopes of pulling big cash out of the pockets of the inexperience seems like a particularly deplorable action, and I hope they lose their shirts doing it. I feel about these guys the same way I feel about the government shutting down coal-fired plants just to make electricity more expensive to force people to "go green". I can't do anything about it, but I certainly don't have to like it.

Donaldb wrote:My definition of a “hoarder” is someone who was smarter than you.