There were urban legends during the early days of the Clintonista regime about this. If I remember it correctly, the primers were the fictitious target of obsolescence. This caused a run on existing stocks.
Many of us simply discovered the merits of surplus ammo about this time. I can remember buying surplus 7.62x51 NATO for a little as 15 cents a round. A hundred dollar bill would get you over a thousand rounds of commie 7.62x39.
Those days are gone.
Those days are gone.
Not really... you can still get surplus AK rounds for less that 20 cents a piece. The surplus 7.62x51 is around 30 cents a piece. This is with free shipping and no tax most of the time. Everything else is two or more times as expensive now than in the Clinton years, so in inflation adjusted dollars I don't think that ammo is that much more expensive now.
I reload my own which is even cheaper and easier on your guns than the surplus ammo. I just bought 400 rounds of boxer primed reloadable 7.62 x 51 NATO for slightly more than 50 cents a piece with free shipping and no tax. I can reload them with my homemade cast bullets and a reduced charge of Hodgdons 4895 powder for less than 15 cents a piece. I use a turret press for those and a progressive press for my pistol cartridges so I can churn them out almost as fast as I can shoot them. 9mm costs only about 5 cents a piece to reload with a homemade cast bullet.
I remember those days. At gun shows the lowest price I ever saw for that NORICO 7.62x39 was 59.95 for a crate of a thousand. I bought some and years later some of it I had was flooded by Katrina. I washed it in fresh water, coated it in liquid wrench and was surprised that all the rounds I tried fired just fine. Those were the days when you would go to gun shows to get good deals. Not anymore. I don’t even bother going these days.