If you shoot any military surplus rifles, like Mosin Nagants, chambered for 7.62x54R ammo, and shoot military surplus ammo through them, do you ever wonder about where all that milsurp ammo is coming from and how much of it there is out there! I have to wonder, if you have ever wondered as I often have wondered, as to when the combloc military surplus supply of this stuff will run out. If you think about it, as I have done, you would realize as I have realized, there has to have been millions of rounds of this stuff sold here in the USA - all of it imported from communist bloc countries. In addition, I think all of it that has reached the commercial marketplace in the United States during the past 20 years was manufactured in the 1950s through the 1980s. It's not like they are still making it and we are getting newly manufactured military surplus; we are getting what is left over from the cold war. It is ammo that has sat in storage for at least about a quarter of a century up to maybe 60-65 years or so. Granted, they made a lot of it, I guess they figured if it came to a shooting war on the ground they wanted to be ready for us but it was a finite number of rounds that they manufactured - wasn't it! So, it has to run out sooner or later - doesn't it?
Think about it - yes, as I have done - you do not see, as you once did see for sale, Yugoslavian 7.62x54R anymore, nor Romanian, nor Czech, nor Albanian, nor Hungarian. Forget about Polish, East German, Finnish and Red Chinese - I never saw that ammo from those countries ever offered at all. About the only stuff you see for sale now commercially came out of Russia (the Soviet Union when it was made) and Bulgaria. Even with it coming from only two source countries, you still can buy it in 440 round tins at about $89.99 per tin. That works out to about .20 cents per round. Yeah, I know, about 5 years ago o so it was going for .13 cents a round or thereabout but such are the anti-gun times in which we live under Obummer and all things guns & ammo related have gone up in price. When you give it a bit of thought though, and yes I have given it some, .20 cents a round is not too bad.
Regardless, the questions remain: When is the supply going to run out and how will it play out when supplies of it do begin to run low? Will the prices slowly rise as stocks of it dwindle or will prices suddenly jump when the suppliers of it realize that they are down to their last lots? Or will they just keep selling it at about the same price until there is no more of it and then really surprise us when it unexpectedly stops showing up on the shelves or on our favorite ammo dealer's websites? I tend to think there will be price increases as it runs short and I do expect it to run short even though right now there seems to be no end to it as if it is stored in a magical warehouse in which the supply of it keeps replenishing itself ad infinitum.
Thing is though, that isn't happening and it has to run out sooner or latter. With that very thought in mind, I have gone out and stocked up on a bit of it. I don't have all that much of it, maybe a tin or two here or there, maybe another I have forgotten about somewhere - which would make it three tins - one for each of the Nagants I remember owning. (There may be another Nagant around here someplace and one of these days I will count them.) Yet, even only two tins would probably last me a good long while. Truth is I do not shoot the Mosin Nagants as much as I used to. Now that I am getting older I try to pamper my right shoulder instead of torturing it and only shoot those boomers rarely. But, you are not me and you may be out there shooting up a storm with your Nagants and your other firearms chambered for 7.62x54R ammo. If you are shooting it almost as fast as you buy it, you may want to give some thought, as I have given some thought, to buying some of it to lay aside for a rainy day. If you have not thought of it, maybe you should think about it now, see: http://gunbot.net/ammo/762x54/. If that is not enough to tempt you, then remember this - if you buy a case (as in two 440 round tins) you often get the spam can opener thrown into the deal.
All the best,
Glenn B
PS: Man, oh man, I just about talked myself into buying another 440 round tin of it! I have to count mine first, then pay off some pressing debts, and only then will maybe think about buying another tin of it (whom am I trying to kid).
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