Last primers I bought at the local pawn shop where I normally buy such things were $3.99/100. Figured I'd give the "other" pawn shop a try and they had em' for $29.95/1000 which turns out to be $2.99/100. Still higher then they should be IMHO but a buck cheaper then the other guys. So, after I picked up 200 small pistol and 300 large pistol I was told that the price was going up to $3.99/100, that they weren't making any money at $2.99 which was basically just a few cents above their price. Guess I'm going to have to do two things. 1) Find a few local guys to make a group buy with on primers. 2)Switch to Wolf or Tula since they're about $7 bucks cheaper per 1000 then then CCI that I'm using now. Even with component prices going up it's still cheaper to handload then buy loaded ammo but dang, if this keeps up it won't be by much.
Last batch I purchased about a month ago was from powdervalley.com. Tula primers $20/1k. I went in with my cousin and did a bulk buy to make the hazmat and shipping more affordable. They can ship 45lbs on one hazmat tag ($27.50) + shipping costs. Our package was 31lbs and had 12,000 primers and the rest was powder. Local purchase is $10-12 more per pound of powder so for us it made sense even with the additional fee.
Made the mistake of "trying out" Tula primers (small pistol) because they were cheaper than Winchester WSP at a gun show a coupleof years ago...and 10 cases followed me home (at 10,000 primers per case). I have had hard seating primers, misfires on properly seated primers, and most frustratingly of all, inconsistent outside diameters (seat well enough in 9mm cases but frustratingly bad into .38SPL cases). Made the mistake of using a batch on ammo i loaded for IDPA and was embarrased (and my time suffered) due to misfires from faulty primers. I still have 3 cases on this crap in my garage....i hate this stuff. Save yourself some aggravation, get CCI or Win primers.
Thanks for the heads up Happysniper1. I'll probably just stick with CCI since they work pretty well for me. Hope to get a group buy so we all can split the HazMat and Shipping Fees. Just picked up 43 lbs of Wheel Weights, all hand sorted by little ol' me so I know each and every one is a good one. Need to get them into ingots and then start casting bullets so I can load up the 400 or so primed cases that I've already got on hand. Hate to leave stuff undone.
I shot my first batch of Federal primers today since Winchester went dry around here a while back, I bought several thousand of the Federal at a show recently. I was super pleased with them. Shot about 500 today with no issues what so ever. Didn't change anything about my load.
A lot of guys that shoot light hammer springs(talking 1911 style race guns) use Federal because they take less hit to go off. I used Winchester for years but couldn't find any a few months back so I went back to CCI which was what I started out with many, many years ago. Any of em' work great and I'd be happy with Federal, CCI or Winchester. IMHO CCI does seem to be just a touch hotter then the other two though.
I have been noticing that the price has been going up and some manufactures are more than others. I bought 1k of federal small pistol primers they were $29.99. Walked down the shelf at the local gun shop and looked at some CCI and they were ten bucks more. I had some older (real old lol)CCI in the basement that happened to have a price tag on them and they were only $14.99 per 1k lol. Crazy price increases. But overall I use what ever I can find, have had no issues with Winchester, CCI or Federal they all seem to go bang when I pull the trigger .
