The price of scrap has doubled and tripled over the past year. The Chinese are apparently buying up scrap metals in a frenzy. Must have something to do with their 10 year plan to invade Taiwan. I know for a fact that the price of cast bullets has almost doubled since last year. 250gr .45 RNFP that I bought for $33-35/thousand are now $60-65/thousand.
The price of scrap steel has tripled. A member of our local club is in metal fabrication. He was going to make up some new targets but the price of the steel went from $160 to $310 per sheet in one week in March. Since then it has jumped again. He has friends that have had the inventory of their scrap yards bought up by "oriental buyers". Talking with one of them, his comment was he couldn't give away the shit for the past 10 years, now he has a waiting list for when he gets stock in.
My brother works at a .gov "glow-in-the-dark" facility. When taking bids for and allocating funds for onsite construction, the site has had to account for the rising metals market. Several contractors refused to sign on an accepted bid because, in the time from bid to acceptance, the materials cost skyrocketed way over the already figured in cost differential.
The fact that were trying to rebuild 2 countries and sending alot of resources there doesn't help either.
We play with all this neat metal stuff, so were going to be affected just like everyone else.