I'm continuing my efforts to make up for the current shortfall in my writing income, caused by my heart attack last November and my ongoing recovery from it. I don't want to ask for charity while I have other means to make a living - I was raised to believe that wouldn't be moral, and I still feel that way - so I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to put up with occasional sales patter for firearms and related stuff on this blog instead.
In the current ammunition drought, I'm fortunate to have built up a decent reserve stash of the good stuff over the years - more than I need. I'm also rationalizing my caliber and cartridge selection, cutting down to those that I really need and disposing of firearms and ammunition in the others. I'm glad, now, that I put time and effort into building up my collection in the "fat years", because it's helping to make the "lean years" a lot more survivable! With luck, once my year of heavier medication is over and I've finished with a troublesome medication, my writing output will get back to normal, and I won't need to worry about that any more.
The problem with selling ammunition is twofold. First, there are legal and other restrictions in several states that make it difficult for a private citizen like me, not knowing all the regulatory red flags, to ship ammunition there. (For example, in California, all ammo must be sold through licensed dealers; in New Jersey, it's illegal for citizens to own hollow-point handgun ammunition; and so on.) I'm going to get around that by saying, up front, that if your state has any restrictions at all on the sale and/or possession of ammunition, I'm going to ship through a dealer who will make sure that all those i's are dotted and all those t's are crossed. That will protect me against such legal minefields, but it'll also add to the cost of every transaction, which I'll cover for the sake of our mutual peace of mind.
Second, ammo is very heavy, so shipping it is an expensive exercise (it's classified as ORM-D, and must therefore be shipped by private carrier - not USPS - using ground transport). I have to take account of that in setting my price, because even though I have stuff that may not be readily available elsewhere right now, if it's not affordable, I won't be able to sell it. Face-to-face sales within a couple of hours' drive of the Wichita Falls, TX area are much easier (and cheaper!), so I'll give preference to such sales if I can.
That said, I still think I can offer decent prices for what I have. My dealer, who's a good guy, advised me to use Web sites such as Ammobuy, Ammosearch and Ammoseek to find out the lowest actual, current retail price for each selection, then price mine at three-quarters of that figure, plus 10% to cover shipping charges, if applicable (remember that as a private citizen, I don't get the massive shipping discounts that a large-scale online retailer can command). That's what I've done. (If you use the same services to check my or other prices, remember that their figures may change from day to day as they find new stock and/or drop out-of-date listings.)
All that said, here's what I have available. Click on each link to see a spreadsheet image of the listings. The final column is what I'll charge per box; and if you want a lot (more than $250 worth), I'll pay the shipping costs as an incentive. Below that, add 10% for shipping.
9mm Luger
.40 Smith & Wesson
.45 ACP
45 Colt ("Long Colt")
.40 Smith & Wesson
.45 ACP
45 Colt ("Long Colt")
If you're interested in any of them, please e-mail me (my e-mail address is in my blog profile, under the heading "Peter" beneath "About Me & Contact Info" in the sidebar). First come, first served! As for payment, we can't use PayPal or similar services, because they don't allow firearms-related transactions. It'll have to be done using US Postal Service money orders. That'll be a bit slower, but it has legal "insurance value" for both parties.
I may have more calibers to offer in future, handgun and long gun, if this proves successful. This is a test posting for a few popular handgun cartridges. Let's see how it goes.
Thanks for your interest!
Peter
Edited at 09:54 Central to add: A reader bought my entire stock of .40 S&W, so that's gone.
Edited on April 22 at 06:14 Central to add: Just about everything's sold, so I've taken down the links. Thank you all very much!
