My Dad ordered 80rds of 1975 Argentine ball ammo in one of the Black Friday sales last year. When I went to the range this week to check zero with it I opened the first box and pulled out three nice and shiny rounds and sent them downrange. The goods news is that they went bang and I didn't have any obvious pressure signs. The bad? At 100yrds they patterned right at 9". I stopped shooting them right there and put them away.

Edit: I want to make a correction the a statement that I made earlier about all the ammo being bright and shiny. It turns out that my Dad polished the rounds in the first box before he brought them over.

Yesterday I decided to dissect a couple and see what they looked like on the inside. The round on the left is what all of the dissected rounds look like (externally) and the round on the right is the only one corroded so badly on the outside. So far all have had internal corrosion and the powder was sticky/clumped together.



1 - Inside shoulder
2 - Inside bottom of case
3 - Rusty bottom bullets.

Ouch.

I am planning on calling the seller on Monday and see what they say. I doubt they will do anything but you never know.

I did ask him to open a couple of boxes and take a look at them when they were delivered and he said they all looked good. Well except for the really nasty round above which was in a box he didn't open (figures huh?) all the rest of the ammo is bright and shiny. All the corrosion is on the inside of the cases. For the last 4 months the ammo was stored in the high desert at a pretty low humidity level.

That makes me think that there was an unscrupulous seller somewhere along the way…  For ammo to have corrosion on the inside – there would have *had* to be external corrosion that was removed at some point in this ammo’s history.

Of course, I could be wrong about this..

Ouch. That is good to know.

I bought some as well . Copes right ? In storage for now.
All the rounds I inspected had powder that shakes freely. Havent taken one apart. I did notice that several round have what sounds like different amounts of powder.

I want to make a correction the a statement that I made earlier about all the ammo being bright and shiny. It turns out that my Dad polished the rounds in the first box before he brought them over. The rounds pictured in this post are from a different box and reflect the general exterior condition of the rest of the ammo.





Yes. Copes.

My advice, and it is worth what you paid for it, is pull a few out of storage and take them apart before you shoot them. I opened another box and selected five rounds at random. All of these in this box passed the shake test including the pictured, but you can tell that some of the powder definitely moves more freely in some than in others. I think that this is what you are observing in your last statement.  

The victims:


One "side":


Second "side" (turned 180*):


Left to right 1-5. Three is in the best condition of the ~10 is have pulled apart:



I am going to destroy all of the '75 headstamp and chock it up to some surplus is surplus for a reason and is just crap.

How exactly was this stuff stored for the last year since buying it ?

I wouldn't be so quick to throw the seller under the bus until you can confirm how it was stored... unless that is, this is a common problem with the stuff.

It was ordered on 11/26/10, delivered on or around 12/8/10, and stored in my Dad's reloading room (in his climate controlled shop BTW) over in the high desert of Oregon. The average humidity over there is low enough that they run a humidifier in the house all year.

I can't imagine how you would have to store any ammo for it to get that much corrosion on the inside in only 4 months.

is this a problem with the AP ammo?

Reminds me of some yellow tip I ran across a little while back......

Did you call and if so how did it go ?

Black Friday indeed.