SPA Modeler

Stikpusher wrote:I had cases of MREs that I’d accumulated over my years of service. Pitched them all when I moved last year because they were all well past their shelf life expiration.

But, who would know? The few I’ve had weren’t all that bad. Beats going hungry.

The oldest MREs were close to 40 years old. I don’t know if I’d trust any packaged food that old. And being stored in garages that had wide temperature ranges meant that they were not stored in optimal controlled climate conditions for longest life. I suspect some of the oldest could have been “science projects” of a sort…

Wow, who knows Carlos; you might have tossed out a whole new life form!

That STEN is cool Tex!

Stuart, thanks and yes, I'm fortunate to own it. It is a lot of fun to shoot but it does run through the ammunition rather quickly at around 500 rounds per minutes (rpm) cyclic rate. You can see in one of those videos I posted that a full 30 rd. magazine empties in about 5 seconds. It's not something I pull out of the safe all the time, lol.

Mostly, it only comes out to play on special occasions. Taking it out to the country to make some video of shooting it with my cousin Thomas was one such occasion. Heck, shooting 9mm in semi-auto gets expensive enough, full-auto is a rich man's game and that ain't me!

I used to own a KR 98, Japanese Type 99 with the dust cover and chrysanthemum with baronet, a WW! artillery long barreled luger and a M! Garand, but I had to sell them to pay the IRS one very bad year.

I do have a German ground assault badge



Luftwaffe glider pilot badge



and a British Air Force Cross



Plus the metaled cover New Testament bible from my great uncle and his WW1 uniform.

Steve, those are some cool badges & medals.

Gary, how is the ammo supply situation in your area? It gets bought up off the shelves here as quick as can be here. So you have to be rich and lucky enough to find more ammo to keep shooting nowadays. This is ridiculous.

I'll be pricing .380 acp in a couple of days as well as some 9mm, .223/5.56 maybe...oh, and some .22lr. A few weeks ago, you could bet a bucket of 1,440 rounds of hollow point (Remington) for $160 or so. Last Friday it was $200 at another store. Still cheaper than 40 to 50 a box for 50 rds of .380. Still can get 9mm for about 23 a box of 50 here. Nuts,

$23 for a box of 50 rounds of 9mm is inflated, but almost normal. Now $50 for a box of 50 rounds of 9mm is insane, and that’s what is happening a lot. Outrageous.

Yeah, ammo prices are unreal right now. I get email newsletters from various vendors everyday and once in a while I check the prices. It seems to be going down some but not enough. Lumber has also gone through the roof around here. Someone claimed it would go back down this Fall but I'm doubtful. People are buying it now at crazy prices, just as they are ammunition, so why would they decrease those prices? I sure hope I'm wrong because I had planned on having a 16'x20' rustic cabin built on our farm this summer.

I haven't bought a round of ammo in a long time. I bought a lot of it when it was cheaper; I'm trying to remember how much I paid for the last 1,000 round case of 9mm. Maybe $200? It was a while back though. Same with rifle fodder; I bought approx. 9,000 rounds of 7.62x51 when I first got into FALs. The first 3 cases of 1K were delivered for $150 (.15 per round). And I've bought more at slightly higher prices since. When bought my Polish Tantal AKM in 5.45x39, I also ordered a lot of that ammo. I received 7 or 8 spam cans with 1100 rounds each of surplus stuff, corrosive but good shooting ammo. No matter how you do it though, corrosive cleanup on a AKM is a pain in the butt. So, that rifle mostly eats commercial 5.45 with Golden Tiger as the best in my opinion. And I have no idea how much 7.62x39 I have for those AKs and SKSs. It's stacked pretty deep.

Yesterday at the lumber yard, a man said his son had bought his first pistol, a .22 from Academy, and he was limited to two boxes of .22LR. I think 9mm is pretty hard to find locally and probably too high to shoot comfortably. One reason I seldom exercise that Sten sub-gun; 30 rounds in 5 seconds runs into serious coin for this old retired teacher!

When I started buying old milsurp bolt guns, I had even more "flavors" to buy. Back then 7.2x54R was dirt cheap, and so was 8mm Mauser, so I bought a lot of it too. If one counted all the ammo in total, including .22 rounds, the stash probably runs close to 50-60K? It's more than I'll ever shoot in my lifetime but I bought it to ensure that my heirs would have plenty to go with the guns they'll inherit. They may cuss me though when if they ever have to move it...