More obsolete case sizes in our future

[georgerkahn]

My "salvation" has been a company in Hollywood, Maryland, named "Quality Cartridge Compny" (https://qual-cart.com/index.html). I'm getting kind of old, and many of my few firearms are even older, and for years the calibres I cast for, reload, and shoot are never available either in store shelves or mail-order! Quality apparently recognized the need -- and manufactures quite a few obsolete (to many ) calibre cases. Buffalo Arms also purveys some, as well as Graf & Sons, albeit many of Graf's are in fact Quality Cartridge products.
... A source I found, use, and have never had a bad experience with! The only "down" side is on occasion one must wait a few months until they run another batch of the calibre you elected... but this is but a very minor issues.
geo

[Rockingkj]

I like the old time hard to find cal rifles. But I can’t help but wonder with the proliferation of “new” cartridges in the past 10 years of so how many of those will go by the wayside and someone will be trying to find cases for the 6.5 Creedosuper foo Wanger? A name I made up but feel free to use it.

[dverna]

That makes sense with something like the 33 Winchester or 40-82, but there are a lot of people shooting 32-20 and 44-40. I read comments regularly that cowboy action shooters would use 32-20 as a historical cartridge but they can’t get ammo, so they fall back to 38 Special.

What I don’t understand is why Starline apparently has plenty of 5 in 1 brass in stock but nobody can backorder 44-40 or 38-40. It’s the same basic thing, aside from longer length and larger primer hole in the blanks.

It must be a regional thing, but for the 10-12 years I shot CAS all over Michigan, I never saw a .32-20 or .44-40 being used. Certainly, none of the competitive shooters would shoot those calibers.

Maybe the crowd you run in uses calibers like that but that is not where the market is or ever will be. You are correct in assuming you need to stock when you can as they will be both hard to find and expensive down the road.

I would not be worried about .30/30 cases. There may be a short term lack of supply in your area, but that should not last. A search on Ammoseek shows it available from multiple sources.

[HWooldridge]

It must be a regional thing, but for the 10-12 years I shot CAS all over Michigan, I never saw a .32-20 or .44-40 being used. Certainly, none of the competitive shooters would shoot those calibers.

Maybe the crowd you run in uses calibers like that but that is not where the market is or ever will be. You are correct in assuming you need to stock when you can as they will be both hard to find and expensive down the road.

I would not be worried about .30/30 cases. There may be a short term lack of supply in your area, but that should not last. A search on Ammoseek shows it available from multiple sources.

This may be a chicken vs egg situation on the 32-20. It’s a historically correct cartridge and has little to no recoil (and cost effective to reload if you can find brass). One might assume it’s a perfect choice for CAS, but people find that 38 Special is better just because it’s so much easier to acquire. The 32-20 naturally disappears because it’s too rare to shoot.

I bought a 32-20 Marlin 1894 in the 1970’s that was very accurate but the chamber was so eroded that it split cases on the first shot. Ammo was much cheaper then, and available - so I hunted with it, but finally sold off because I couldn’t reload the brass. Years later, I found a Savage 23 in pristine shape and my interest in the 32-20 returned. I have enough brass to hunt with but there’s no way I could afford to shoot CAS with the caliber now.

[huntinlever]

Deleted, my mistake.

[barnetmill]

I do think that some calibers will disappear from the normal commercial markets. But many of the others still guns out there chambered for that are still in need of ammo.
The ammo industry is starting to transition from a sellers market back to buyers market, one that transition of complete, the possibility of a major manufacturer during a run of 32 win spl or 44-40 might be more likely to happen.
things that seem really dead are things like 25 and 32 rimfires for example.

[Kestrel4k]

How many chamberings were supposed to bury the 30-30; I count the 307Win and the 308 Marlin Express, just for starters. Dead as doornails, with the 30-30 cartridge still made in quantity by all the major manufacturers.

The people that are sucking wind (& should have known better), are the ones that bought modern rifles chambered in instant-orphans like the WSSM's, the 308 Marlin, or the 450 Marlin (dumbest idea ever, with that oversized belt).

I'd rather work to feed an older 'obsolete' chambering w/ hard-to-find brass (like 257 Roberts ) than one of those new stinkers - brass for those will most likely /never/ be made again.

[35 Rem]

I doubt even the youngest forum members will see the 30-30 go obsolete but some of those others for sure are going to remain relatively hard to find. Right now being that we are just coming out of a severe shortage of all things "Gun", it seems worse that it really is. These cycles always come and go but you can tell supply is catching up because of all the "Free Shipping", "Free HaxMat" "Ammo discount" sales I see in my email In-Box weekly. Prices will continue to fall if people will hold out and buy the bare minimum they need to keep shooting and stop being so pessimistic about "The New Normal". Of course prices won't go back to what they were before the Great China Virus Plague but nobody expects that - we always have a price increase every year and I think it's obvious that we are slowly easing back towards those prices for powder, bullets, brass and hopefully eventually primers.

The number one thing you can do to fight inflated gun prices is keeping Democrats out of the White House. And only buy guns when Republicans are in power AND buy enough to last through two cycles of Gun Hating Democrats when they do get elected.

I'm thankful for Starline myself because they are our best hope for these old cartridges. I can't imagine not having a 32-20 to plink with. I have something like 1,000 cases so am good for a nice long while. Also managed to get 500 Starline 32 Winchester Special cases last fall - unfired - from an individual on Gunbroker who sold them at a fair price. That is one where getting a large quantity of unfired brass is not easy.

Agree that a bunch of these new cartridges that gun companies keep insisting on introducing will go obsolete in short order. So many of them do nothing that an existing cartridge won't do. You could say that they are the solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

[Froogal]

It must be a regional thing, but for the 10-12 years I shot CAS all over Michigan, I never saw a .32-20 or .44-40 being used. Certainly, none of the competitive shooters would shoot those calibers.

Maybe the crowd you run in uses calibers like that but that is not where the market is or ever will be. You are correct in assuming you need to stock when you can as they will be both hard to find and expensive down the road.

I would not be worried about .30/30 cases. There may be a short term lack of supply in your area, but that should not last. A search on Ammoseek shows it available from multiple sources.

I shoot with N.C.O.W.S. The 32-20 and 44-40 are both very popular. I myself would be shooting 44-40 IF I could find some brass.