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06/24/2007 Archived Entry: "Overpriced Surplus"

THINK BEFORE YOU BUY!

Yeesh! Blogispondent Ian here, and I find myself rather flabbergasted. I just watched some battlepacks of South African .308 ammo sell, quickly, for $70 each. These are battlepacks of 140 rounds each, so these buyers are paying 50 cents/round. And for what? Generic-spec ammo (not particularly accurate), non-reloadable, FMJ, made 30 years ago, and stored in unknown conditions for all that time.

The last time I was in one of the big sporting goods stores, I noticed that they had Remington .308 on sale for $10/box. That's the exact same price as the South African is now going for. But that Remington ammo is reloadable, uses soft-point bullets (which the military would do in a heartbeat if they could), is brand new, and loaded to tighter specs than South Africa's low-bid military contractor.

So why on earth buy the surplus stuff?

My guess is that it's the word "battlepack". Folks see that word and their brain kinda switches off...if it's called "battle," it must be better, right? No! That ammo was a great buy when it was half the current cost, because you could hardly reload 308 for that money. But with today's prices, it's a waste to buy the surplus, because you can get new ammo, better in every way, for the same cost (and I won't even go into the reloading options).

Posted by Ian @ 01:45 PM CST
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