First AR recently purchased for my 50th.  So far I'm really enjoying the platform, although I've much to learn.  I spent a boatload of money on my AR and optics but I'm finding the cost of ammo to be the limiting factor with regards to range time.  Kinda feel like I have a brand new corvette in my garage but can't afford the gas, lol.  I'm curious, before the run on Ammo, what was a decent price per round for name brand 5.56?  Those of you who shoot regularly, roughly how many rounds do you run through per month?

Black Friday 3 years ago had federal 556 ammo at 23 cents per round shipped. I bought a lot.

End of the Obama years I used to get Wolf Gold delivered for about $.30 a round.  Trumps surprise win dropped it all pretty good.   I think with rebates I was getting Federal M193 and 855 for less than $.25 delivered in 2017.  2019 I was getting Federal 9mm for $.15 per round delivered.

I only buy brass case or better:

.27 per for Wolf Gold for me
.35 per for HST +P 9
.25 per for .45 S/B
15.9 per for 9mm blackpack

wanna cry? Used to be $7.99 / box 100 rounds Winchester White box 9mm in 1998
early 2000's was around $7 / box for 550 rounds 22 LR

.$28 / round for .223 or 5.56 was usually a low rate, average 55gr cost being about $.32, $.35/round? i think it was like $.26 or $.28 if you got a 1000 count can, and like $.35 for each box of 20. around this time 77gr imi razorcore was about $.68/round, with black hills 77gr otm being $1, $1.05/round. so right now i think prices are just literally double what it was before the jump

Does anyone else remember the $99/ 1000  offer from Sportsman's Guide? Alot of members here ordered "too much" and thier orders got cancelled. Me? I must have ordered under their cutoff.

Why do you want to beat yourself up OP?   I’m still shooting stuff I paid .20CPR.

Brass reloadable M193  32 cents per round.

I still remember Wolf being $89 per 1K.

All through 2015, 2016 and up till the beginning of 2020 when the riots and panic started, the normal "good deal" was 30 cents per round including shipping and tax for brass 223.  A case of federal 223, delivered to your door for $300 was good.  And 17-18 cents a round for steel, about $175 a case.

I did score a crazy good deal with stacking coupons and deals around black friday 2018 or 2019, I got some steel 223 for 9 cents a round.  But those were very rare deals.

And now i'm sad :(

You could easily get steel case 223 for $190/k and 9mm steel cased for $160/k. I bought my last case of 5,250 22LR for $159. That was for Federal, decent stuff for plinking.

Without any sales or rebates. All day price was $330 shipped to my door for 1000 rounds of Fiocchi 55gr FMJ. When the riots happened last year, it started going up pretty fast. I remember a month after the riots started, it was $500 shipped and then just kept climbing as supplies dwindled and barely trickled in.

Funny thing is, it’s back down to $500 shipped for PMC 55gr FMJ if you look hard enough.

223 55gr was typically $270-300 before shipping
5.56 55gr was usually $300
5.56 62gr m855 was like $330-$350
9mm was $170-200
7.62x51/308 was .60 a round and match was $1-1.50 instead of $2-$3

I remember distinctly seeing 5.56 in different local shops at about .30 per rd pretty regularly. I remember because that was kinda my “go ahead and buy some price”.

A couple weeks before covid I decided to focus on my ammo stash by buying a case of wolf gold every month until I couldn't anymore. At under $300 a case I thought it'd be worth the expense.


I got 1k before the panic

Timing
Same with x39 happened when I decided to get an AK and stack that a few weeks ago.

$300 PER 100 FMJ 5.56

UNDER $500 for MK262

$0.08 a round for CCI Standard

$0.16 a round for 9mm FMJ

You could get 1000 rounds of .223 for about $250 if you shopped around at all

I went through receipts.  My cheapest 223 wolf gold was $247, free ship from Targetsportsusa.com.
My cheapest 9mm 147gr subs were $174.
My cheapest 22 was $228 for 5k.

$.24 per round for brass cased pmc Bronze.

So, with the price increases and unavailability of ammo, how many fathers across America aren’t able to take their young kids out shooting?  Give it another 10-20 years of this environment and we’ll have a generation of young adults who will have zero interest in the 2A, because they’ve simply never shot a firearm...  Now that’s effective gun control right there.

17 cents per round is about as cheap as I’ve paid.
15 for 9mm.

This is pretty accurate

I still have a few 20rnd boxes from one of the last $89 cases of x39 I bought back then.    Shoulda stacked it Deeper than I did...

Still have one full bandolier from a few cans of Radway Green I bought around 2005.  Cans were like...$180 bucks I think?  900 rnds per can.  1800 rounds for 360 bucks.  Man.  WHere'd I put that time machine?

Before Obama, I could get 40pks and 50pks of white box for $8.97-11.97 at Walmart.

I should have hit every Walmart within 75 miles when they clearanced all the scary black rifle ammunition a couple years ago.

It wasn’t but 15 years or so ago that the 100 round Winchester white box packs were $9.99 for 9mm, $14.99 for 40SW and $19.99 for 45ACP at Walmart.

In the fall of 2019, a few months before they announced that they would stop carrying those rifle and pistol calibers, Walmart was selling 200-round boxes of Federal 55gr .223 and Winchester 55gr 5.56 for $49.99 each (25 cents per round). That was about the cheapest I saw for U.S.-made brass ammo. A local gun shop in PA, right down the street from Walmart, had the same packs for $65.99 (33 cents per round), which was still reasonable, and understandable since they couldn't compete with Walmart's bulk purchasing.

They kept selling at those prices right up til the end when they stopped carrying them, which I think was around Nov or Dec 2019? The .223 / 5.56 and 9mm went first, of course, and other pistol calibers followed quickly behind, with people loading up their shopping carts at that same Walmart in PA.

This is right around what I was paying

I bought a couple thousand rounds of Federal M193 for a little bit over $500 when leaked videos of Covid response in China hit. Should have bought more since it wasn’t even a headline in our media yet.

When I first started shooting it was around $150/1000.

I love how the OP asks about prices before the most recent price spikes and he gets replies about prices 10-15+ years ago. Don't ever change ARFCOM

Here are some sample prices from a Target Sports USA email ad from February 14, 2020, all with free shipping included:

Wolf Gold 223 Remington 55 Grain FMJ 1000 rounds - $269.50

Wolf Performance 223 Remington 55 Grain FMJ 1000 rounds - $179.50

Target Sports 5.56mm SS109 Ammo 62 Gain FMJ Bulk 1000 rounds - $289.95

Remington UMC 9mm Luger Ammo 124 Grain FMJ 1000 rounds - $179.80

Wolf Performance 9mm Luger 115 Grain FMJ 1000 rounds - $139.80

Winchester USA 9mm NATO 124 Grain FMJ 1000 rounds - $199.80

Federal American Eagle 45 ACP AUTO 230 Grain FMJ 1000 rounds - $299.80

CCI Blazer Brass 10mm AUTO 180 Grain FMJ 1000 rounds - $299.80

Federal Automatch 22LR 40 Grain High Velocity LRN 3250 rounds - $139.90

Armscor 22LR High Velocity 36 Grain Hollow Point 5000 rounds - $169.90

From their February 21, 2020 ad:

Federal American Eagle 5.56mm 55 Grain FMJ Bulk 1000 rounds - $299.95

Federal American Eagle 9mm Luger 147 Grain FMJ 1000 rounds - $199.90

On March 16, 2020 they sent out an email notice saying to expect up to a 10 day delay for orders to ship because of the surge in demand. I recall looking at cases around that time, and they were still around 30-35 cents per round for 5.56 and 20 cent for 9mm. I really wanted to order another case of each but was concerned about the upcoming move that I had scheduled that summer. I didn't want to add any more weight to what I had to move myself. In the end, I rented a U-haul trailer which had plenty of room and weight to spare. I wish I had gone ahead and ordered a few.

I think prices really started to rise in April and May, as there was a slight delay behind the surge in firearm purchases as people realized they needed ammo too. By mid-August, Target Sports' price for 1000 rounds of Lake City 5.56mm XM193 was up to $499.95, and I ordered one then knowing the price would keep going up.

Federal XM193 brown box, .12 CPR delivered, bought a ton, should have got more.  07-08

Yep, can concur. I looked up my invoice email from a Target Sports USA order I'd placed around the Feb 2020 timeframe as well; here are some of the things I bought and their prices:

Federal M855 5.56mm, boxes of 20, $5.97 ea
American Eagle 124gr 9x19mm, boxes of 50, $8.73 ea
Speer Lawman 95gr .380 ACP, boxes of 50, $9.19 ea
Remington AccuTip 55gr .223 varmint loads, boxes of 20, $11.95 ea

In that order confirmation email, there's a "You Might Also Like..." section down at the bottom. One of the things in it is 20rd boxes of Wolf steel-cased 55gr .223 for $3.59ea.

Miss those days.

It is what it is. We're essentially paying twice what we were for stuff like 5.56 and 9mm just before things went nuts around April 2020. I actually didn't buy one single round of ammunition that entire year. And I didn't buy any this year until about late Summer, when I finally broke down and started making smaller purchases again. But instead of ordering 1,000 rounds of 5.56mm at a time like I once did, now I order 500 rounds at a time. Before 2020, I'd get excited about $0.25 per round 5.56. Now I get excited for $0.50 per round 5.56. We'll probably never see ammo as cheap as it was in 2019 again, not with inflation, and not with increases in material costs. Hopefully it will eventually settle down a little lower than it is now. But I've just accepted that ammo is going to cost more than it once did. But I'm still willing to play. If I have to pay more to do so, that is a cost I'm willing to bear. I just shoot a bit less now than I once did. And I buy a bit less when making purchases. But I try to buy a little ammo at least once a week now. Some weeks that might only be a 50 round box or two of pistol ammo purchased locally. Other times I may buy a half case of 5.56 rounds online. But that keeps it coming in at a rate that allows me to get in a fair amount of shooting without depleting my reserves. Just like anything else, we'll eventually adjust to the new norms. I pretty much already have in many ways.

It may be that if you examine your spending habits really closely, you may find places where you can reduce spending and re-allocate the funds to ammo. :)  Most people are pretty clueless where their money actually goes.  I used to track every cent for a couple months in a notebook; it was eye-opening how much money I had been frittering away on piddly little stuff.  Stuff like a soda or candy bar, a drink somewhere, eating out too much, not brown-bagging enough, etc.  Let alone crap that I didn't really need.  Freed up a couple hundred bucks a month of money pissed away. :)

Might be worth a try if you haven't already done something like that. :)

30 cents per round Federal 193

Link?

I just looked at my orders from like 3-4 years ago. What a great times, here are some examples:

February 2019 - $145 for 500 rounds (Armscor USA 223 55 gr. FMJ).
January 2020 - $281.99 for 1000 rounds (Armscor USA 223 55 gr. FMJ).