In a moment of good prior planning, I called Gamaliel to confirm that they had a product and in passing mentioned I also needed to stock up on hard #9 shot. Startled to hear they didn't have any. Checking on-line and making calls, it turns out that a lot of other places don't either. Is this nationwide or just a momentary, regional thing (upper south)?

Have you not read a newspaper, watched TV news or listened to the radio the past nine months?

A. Pandemic - hoarding
B. BLM riots and gun buying frenzy
C. Biden way ahead in the polls with a strong anti-gun platform.

Also the Chinese economy is a huge consumer of lead and it is in the rebound causing shortages and record prices. That’s just the way it is

It's not quite universal - my local places seem to have shot but also have limits. Used to be able to go buy 1000 lbs at a time, now it's 4 or 5 bags. Similar limits on primers and powder.

Add to that, #9s are not produced to the extent that 8s, 7.5s, etc. are.

Gents. Go to garage sales and estate sales. In my area I am constantly finding shot, powder and primers unbelievably cheap. Besides that, you might find other things that you actually don’t need

Hard to believe politics has anything to do with #9 shot! What are folks planning to do; forage on song birds? Can’t help but admire the prescience of someone hoarding skeet shot in anticipation of an extended period of social distancing. Price usually clears the market, and China’s been booming for 30 years. ????

Everything electric takes a battery and most of them contain a lot of lead.

Steve

Like the 27,000,000 cars manufactured in China: three times what we produce here in the US.

And lithium.

tp (in the battery biz)

With the highly divisive and charged political environment we have fallen into now, combined with instant personal broadcasts of anything from truth to trash to millions through the internet, massive effects can be caused by political discourse on lots of commodities and policies. Such as seen with: toilet paper, rubbing alcohol, virus deaths, firearms purchases, etc. Shot purchases made to "stock up" likely have followed along with other sales volumes of ammo and loading components into scarcity. It's not like hundreds of thousands of Americans decided to take up skeet recently.

Read up on "unintended consequences" of societal activities. Especially when we have 300 million residents in the US alone.

Good luck, garrisonjoe

I didn’t think about batteries for the booming electric/hybrid car business. Ah-hah!

The EPA has shut down every smelter in the US so any virgin lead must now be imported. Shot in the US is now made from recycled or reclaimed lead, and there aren’t many of those shot makers left either

I have to wonder how the price of lead shot is determined based on raw cost. I just checked and lead on the U.S. commodities market is currently at 1771.80 per metric ton. Futures are down 2.00 today and the price has been trending down for the last 2 months. The low price over the past 2 years has been 1517 in May 2020 and the high was 2177 in August 2019.

I'm pretty sure that Lithium ion batteries don't use lead, and from the price trend it would appear that demand is a bit down for lead right now. I've been paying between $36 to $41 per bag of lead shot for the last 5 years. My guess is hoarding of lead shot is the cause of the shortage. May also be import restriction from China due to the current trade situation.

Consolidation in the shot production market!

RotoMetals recently bought West Coast shot (and another major brand in the western US that I don't remember the name of right now).

Remington shot has a chance of no longer being produced if Vista Outdoors can't stand the workplace health costs. It was recently being used almost all in Remington shell production, however, with little for sale to others.

The more the market gets "cornered" by a few large producers, the higher the price difference between bulk antimonial lead and finished shot.

A few small shot producers have sprung up in Arizona and Utah over the last few years. Hope that continues.

Good luck, garrisonjoe

West Coast's Carson City shot tower has had several names over the years. Rotometals owns them and Lawrence so it has somewhat of a monopoly

I have always gotten the best price from McAllister shot in Iowa. I believe that they make their own shot.

Our club just received a ton of shot. With the shipping and tax it came to $40/bag.

Casonet, thank you for the information.

I emailed them and they only have 6 & 7s right now.

Words from the philosophical father of capitalism:

"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”

Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 1776