Posted on 07/23/2022 6:51:31 AM PDT by marktwain
The short answer is: 1987.
.22 Short rimfire cartridges became more expensive than .22 Long Rifle rimfire cartridges in 1987. They have remained more expensive since then.
This correspondent has been able to obtain manufacturer price list information for .22 Shorts from 1911 to 1996, and .22 Long Rifle
ammunition from 1911 to 2022. That is 111 years of pricing history. Of the 111 years, this correspondent was able to collect data for 70 individual years. There are enough data points to give shape to the curve.
There are several ways to measure the value of money, and how it changes over time.
You can choose a particular commodity. Gold has been popular. Determine what an ounce of gold has cost in dollars over time. This was easy when the price of gold was fixed by the US government (the gold standard) from 1789 to 1932, at 20 dollars per troy ounce.
It became dubious from 1934 to 1973-74, because the price was set at $35 per ounce, but you could not legally own gold in the United States. After 1974, the dollar was completely decoupled from the price of gold, so the dollar prices are readily available.
In 1911, a round of .22 Short cost .625 cents. Gold was 20 dollars an ounce, so a .22 short cost of .0003125 troy ounces of gold. Today, that much gold costs 57.8 cents. Using the same measure, a Long Rifle in 1911 cost .000347 ounces of gold, or 69.4 cents of gold using the price of gold in 2022.
In 2022, a Long Rife cartridge costs about 8 cents, or .000043 ounces of gold at 2022 prices. The price of a Long Rifle in 2022 is almost exactly 1/8 the amount of gold it costs in 1911.
(Excerpt) Read more at ammoland.com ...
In 1961, at the age of 14, I bought a box of 50 .22 shorts for 45 cents. No questions, no paperwork, no background checks.
.22 CBee, 33 gr. frangible HP bullet
I have to cycle the action manually, but they go into the chamber from the magazine, which CB Longs wouldn’t do.
You couldn’t do that with a slingshot, today, in the local BiMart.
“Are you ordering lead bars?”
“Sort of.”
A box of lead-acid batteries for a wheelchair felt the same!
I love using the CCI CB Longs in my Marlin 39 - all you hear is the hammer drop, followed by the meaty thump of the bullet connecting with the target. I tried the CB Caps first (same ballistics as the CB Longs, just made on a Short case), but the 39 didn't feed them reliably. I guess even the Short-Long-Long Rifle combo designs have limitations.
Shorts have become another specialty ammunition, while Long Rifle cartridges have become a commodity.
Reminds me that the truth is a rare commodity.............
"Stamped on the box" I assume?
It was the proper dimensions for the .380 cartridge, correct?
Introduced as the first American metallic cartridge ever produced in 1857, the .22 Short was an entirely self-contained cartridge that was moisture resistant and more quickly reloaded than other firearms of the era. It was a rimfire cartridge, meaning that the priming compound was applied inside the rim of the cartridge, which ignited the powder charge held in the case.
The Power of 22 Short Ammo
There’s no two ways about it. The .22 Short is a small round. But what it lacks in size, it makes up for in power. These days it’s mostly used as a relatively quiet round for people to practice with at the range. In the days when America was still a free country, it was a popular round for gallery shooting at fairs and carnivals. In fact, many rifle manufacturers made 22 Short chambered rifles specifically for this purpose. Any rounds manufactured specifically for fairs and carnivals were designed to disintegrate on impact to make it so they wouldn’t ricochet or penetrate the backstop.
Until the 2004 Olympiad, the .22 Short was the round of choice in the 25-meter rapid fire pistol event, thanks to its very low recoil and high accuracy. They were also a preferred round in the modern pentathlon event until the changeover to air pistols.
The History of the 22 Short
Smith & Wesson’s first revolver was chambered for the .22 Short, which was designed to be used as a self-defense cartridge – a popular use for soldiers in the Civil War. The .22 Short remained popular after the war and was chambered in a growing variety of rifles and small pistols. Many youngsters of the late 19th century and early to mid 20th century received .22 Short rifles as their first gun. While it was eventually replaced by the more popular .22 LR, there are still dedicated fans who have kept the place of this cartridge secure in the world of shooting.
The original .22 Shorts carried black powder, and the old Smith & Wesson Model 1 revolvers that shot them often suffered from pitting. In the smokeless powder era, the 29 grain (gr) bullet provided some serious speed and power for this little round. Make it into a hollow point and you have a seriously deadly and accurate round for shooting small game at short range. It’s relatively quiet, making it an excellent choice for guys sitting around their backyard plinking on a Saturday night. This likewise means it’s an effective round for hunters who want to maintain a bit of stealth.
The roots of the .22 Short lie in the origin of rimfire technology. This dates back to the mid-1800s when the Frenchman Louis Flobert began tinkering with lead balls in percussion caps. He didn’t ultimately come up with a lot on his own, but he did start the rimfire revolution, which bore fruit with the .22 Short, the first metallic cartridge produced in the United States. The .22 Short later became the basis for the not creatively named 22 Long, .22 Extra Long and .22 Long Rifle rounds.
The .22 Short saw a great deal of use in shooting galleries, which were widespread from the late 19th century until the mid 20th century. With a very mild report, no recoil, and sufficient accuracy, the .22 Short had a reputation for being able to take small game and control pests.
Once upon a time, the firearm market had neither Glock nor AR. What it did have, however, was the .22 rimfire variants, perhaps most prominently the .22 Short. It’s not a large round, but it’s versatile and powerful, which is probably why it’s been around for 160 years.
The round boasts a stunning array of firearms available for use. Hundreds of weapons have been chambered for .22 Shorts over the last century, with dozens upon dozens available on the market today. The firearms chambered for .22 Shorts run the gamut from AR platforms all the way to old-fashioned lever action rifles to revolvers and autoloaders. Virtually every type of weapon imaginable has been chambered for a .22 Short at one point or another. A number of popular conversion kits exist specifically to chamber AR platforms for .22s. As the cost of .22 rounds tends to be a lot less than .223, that means a lot more shooting for a lot less money. No matter what you want to do with a firearm, you can do it with a .22.
Its lead round nose bullet weighs 29 gr and reaches a velocity of 1,045 feet per second, resulting in 70 foot pounds of muzzle energy. Although initially developed more than 100 years ago as a self-defense cartridge, few modern self-defense weapons are chambered for the .22 Short.
Several manufacturers have produced rifles for the .22 Short – including Marlin, Winchester and Remington. The rifles were most commonly made as pump and lever action guns, with single-shot rifles a close third. Browning produced a semi-automatic rifle for the .22 Short, and Winchester accepted special orders for bolt action rifles that fired the .22 Short.
Why People Buy 22 Short Bulk Ammunition
Some of the most common uses for the .22 Short caliber round include:
Training: The .22 Short is a stock round for teaching newbies the fundamentals of firearms. This is because it’s such a reliable round, which is also true of the .22 Long.
Hunting: It’s not going to bag you an elk, but for small game, .22 rounds are great. You can easily fell large raccoons and foxes, to say nothing of even smaller game like rabbits or squirrels.
Competition: Many of the same qualities that make the .22 Short such an effective teaching round also make it a great round for competition practice. Remember that this was the preferred round of Olympians and other world-class competitors.
Self Defense: While the .22 Short isn’t the best round for self defense, it’s certainly better than nothing. You can kill someone with it, but the stopping power is a whole other matter. As Frank C. Barnes wrote in Cartridges of the World, “Humans shot with the .22 Long Rifle often show little immediate distress, survive without complications for several days, then die suddenly.”
Plinking: Because of the low cost of this round, it’s perfect for afternoon plinking with your friends. And because it’s so accurate and reliable, you can use it to shoot smaller targets like dandelions, pieces of clay pigeons, or fallen pine cones and apples.
One problem with the .22 Short? It’s prone to shortages, as are many related .22 rounds. Curiously, it’s the versatility and low cost of the .22 Short that led to the shortages. Because it allows people to have a low-cost day down at the range, it’s common for there to be a run on .22 Short rounds wherever they pop up. Many of the factories manufacturing these rounds have a limited smelting capacity, so if you’re looking for an inexpensive, highly versatile and effective round, it’s not a bad idea to snap up as much of this as you can when you get the opportunity.
A great cartridge, the .22 Short shoots accurately and quietly, and has a nearly imperceptible recoil, especially when firing subsonic rounds. This makes it a good cartridge for first-time shooters, and also a fun plinker
https://ammo.com/rimfire/22-short-ammo
Economies of scale are a broader view.
Absorption cost accounting is why a 1/4” iron pipe tee, cost more than a 1/2” iron pipe tee.
(I was in the wholesale hardware distribution business for 40 years)
I have a Taurus TX22 semi-automatic pistol. I have shot the Super Colibris in it. While they do not cycle the action, they feed very reliably if you manually cycle the action.
With a suppressor attached, they are BB gun quiet out of the pistol.
They have good accuracy out to 10 yards, enough for small pests.
It’s been a long time and I can no longer remember the details. The bullets fired just fine.
Thinking about how the stamping must work, I can’t believe it was entirely clear. One of the guys said, “Hey, it’s stamped 9mm Luger.” Until recently, I haven’t had any fine detail in my vision due to a variety of eye problems.
He mistakenly purchased .380 cartridges for it.
He later sold it to me, along with the cartridges he had for it, which is how I discovered his error.
He said it was reliable. I often wondered what sort of accuracy he achieved with the mismatch.
The Makarov pistols have a reputation for reliability and accuracy.
I haven’t played with my pistols for a long, long time. So, the details are getting vague as to which 9mm ammo doesn’t work in which pistol. I have purchased from lots of manufacturers and some of the ammo is fractionally longer than the ammo from the other manufacturers. A few of my (cheaper) guns fire both lengths with ease. But I have one pistol which I finally stopped carrying because I kept hitting the magazine release by accident. But that gun would only chamber and fire the slightly shorter 9mm rounds. Have you ever come across this issue? If so, how do I avoid buying the wrong ammo?
In 1961, at the age of 20, I was stationed in Germany, and bought a CARTON OF CAMELS for 90 cents.
Today, a carton of Camels is over $ 90 Dollars in PA and over $100 in NY.
If you buy a carton of Camels in kalifornikator, they shoot you, but grass is free in the clinics.
The question is difficult to answer without examining the pistol and ammunition in question.
9mm is, precisely, a caliber, not a cartridge. There are many, many different 9mm cartridges.
Some 9mm cartridges are known by several names, even though they have the same dimensions.
Some pistols have reputations for being able to fire several types of 9mm ammunition, even though they were designed to fire just one type.
The .380 pistol cartridge is also known as the 9mm corto, 9mm kurtz, 9x17, 9mm Browning, 9mm short and 9mm Browning Court.
There is also the possibility your pistol has a chamber which was manufactured at the far end of the allowable tolerances.
The first, and most easy thing to check, is to determine what cartridge designation is stamped on your pistol (have someone else read it if you must), and make sure the cartridges used are the same designation as the cartridges indicated on the pistol itself.
Some older or foreign pistols may not have a cartridge designation stamped on them.
Thank you for your response. I had no idea the pistols were stamped. This particular one was my most expensive and I was disappointed in the magazine release problem. But when the gun shot it was extremely accurate.
I have had a couple of eye operations and can now, with prescription lenses, read even small print. (Actually, had to have scar tissue scrapped off my retina...while awake.)
Didn’t the Spanish used to make a pistol that would shoot all the 9 mm rounds?
Pistola Modelo B comes to mind. Often called a “garbage gun” because it would shoot all the various 9mm, Largo, Kurz and other cartridges.
Called supply and demand!
I like the pistol. They are fairly accurate. But, by today's standards, they are heavy, complex, and only hold 8-9 rounds.
Not a good round to use in an auto loading firearm; not enough power to throw back the bolt to cycle another round. It’s good in bolt or slide rifles though.
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