The Chantilly, VA, gun show, sometimes called “The Nations Gunshow” opened to the public at 1 p.m. on Friday, July 26. The line outside the Dulles Expo Center was several hundred yards long by 12:30 with more people flocking in by the minute.
When the doors opened, the first stop for many folks seemed to be the two largest purveyors of reloading components, or any one of several dealers with ammo for sale.
The largest vendor of reloading supplies had a solid line of folks around their tables for the entire four hours we were at the show and fully a third of the folks we noticed had some sort of ammo they were toting around, usually by the case.
For those shopping for reloading stuff, powder and primers seemed to be the high demand items.
Powder was priced at about $26+ per pound and primers were at $40 per thousand and up. There seemed to be plenty of both, at least to meet Friday’s demand.
was little better at this gun show than it was across the nation in June and July. There was lots of .22LR in pretty old packaging at awfully high prices and new production .22 was priced at an average of $14 per 100 rounds and up. .17 HMR and .17Mach2 were priced at $17 and $10 per box respectively and there was not a lot of either. We saw little in the way of .22 Magnum.
The good news we took away from the Chantilly gun show was that supplies of reloading components, specifically powder, seem to be getting better. As for ammunition, we were encouraged to see common and popular calibers available in case lots, albeit a bit on the expensive side. As supplies catch up with demand we feel this whole situation will be sorted out sooner than many seem to think.
However, if the buying we saw at Chantilly is indicative of what’s going on nationwide we could well be wrong.
