Because I used to buy ammo from CheaperThanDirt.com by the pallet, I ended up on their “Great Customer!” mailing list, which means I get bombarded with “deals” on a daily basis. (Seriously, CTD: you guys need to update your customer purchase history algorithms.)
Anyway, I used the word deals in quotes, because I just got this offer:
Wait wait wait: fifteen bucks for a small ammo can? The ones they used to throw in if you bought a case of ammo from them? I remember gun shows where the dealers had them stacked high and were trying to sell the things for $5 a pop. Most went home with them. Hell, I used to give the damn things away at the range once I’d emptied them — a reasonably frequent occurrence — just so I wouldn’t have to schlep them home.
Gah. This is what happens when you disappear from polite society for a few years; you come back, and everything’s suddenly unaffordable. You never see stuff like this make it into the economists’ calculation of inflation and the rising cost of living…
The guys at CTD lost me forever after Sandy Hook – nearly immediately after it was on the news they cancelled a raft of outstanding orders and jacked their prices on nearly everything to stratospheric levels. A standard capacity pmag that sold for $14 a day previous was suddenly listed as $80.
They’ll never get another cent from me.
My comment to one of CTD’s sales people: “Dirt certainly seems to have become more expensive these days.”
You are not alone. I went to the NRA show in Indy after Sandy Hook. CTD had two people at their booth. Midway had well over 50 lined up double-triple deep and blocking the aisle.
Cheaper than Dirt is no longer any such thing, unless you count Dirt as Prime Manhattan Real Estate.
Heh. At age 82, the whole world gives me sticker shock! 🙂 If TPTB are so wise and all-knowing, whatever happened to my nickel coffee? Cigars for 6, 8 and 15 cents? New cars for a couple of thousand bucks? In 1950 I gave $35 for a like-new Colt Woodsman 4″. In 1966 I bought a fairly nice house in a west Austin middle-class neighborhood for $13,500.
I’ve always liked the opening line of Sabatini’s “Scaramouche”. For sure, the second part is spot-on.