The-Armory.com Forum

I've seen surplus sales of 80's issue ammo. Would it be wise to buy ammo this old. The ammo seems to still be in the original packing.

Diznuff, Ammo that's manufactured in the 80s I'd have no concern with. Most military ammo is manufactured to store for 50 years or more and when it's stored right you will not have any problems even when it's stored longer. I've shot ammo from the 30s with Nazi proof marks on the shell casing and had no problems. On the other hand I've shot some 308 win Indian ammo manufactured in 80s-90s and had all kinds of problems. It is more the quality of how the ammo was manufactured than the age of ammo.

Thanks for the Info!

When I inherited my SW M10-6 back in April, it came with a jar (yup, a jar) of .38SPL reloads.

I was tempted to just trash them, but though what the heck. Since it hadn't obviously be shot in eons, it shouldn't hurt.

It was by far, the NASTIEST ammo I have ever shot. At any rate, I won't shoot old reloads at a minimum. If the "new" ammo is military and has been stored, like he said... I wouldn't worry too much about it.

Roger on the reloads

I'm shootin 8mm surplus ammo from 1937 without a problem. My reloads from the 70's are going off without a hitch right now in '06 too

Yup.. but how nasty is it? (smokey and hard to clean up?)

The '37 turk ammo isn't hard to clean up, I just run wet patches thru the bore till there clean using G.I. Rifle Bore Cleaner. I clean every gun the same way wether the ammo i'm shooting is corrosive or not to be safe.

Even the new wolf ammo smells like horse sh!t mixed with hay and a little gunpowder, it smells really weird but it shoots good and its really affordable. I worry more about wether its corrsoive or not with the older stuff.

I'm up to the my '77, '78 & 79 dated reloads now and i still have plenty of my reloaded ammo left from the 80's yet too. My older stuff is shooting like the day I reloaded it without a problem. Its 45acp, 38spec, 357mag and 44mag too.

yep i shoot alot of old .303 and everyonce in a while a round wont go off, but for the price i get it at i cant beat it although recently i started shooting the bandolier full of ammo that came with the gun and they seem to be filled with cardboard cause every time i pull the trigger i get a blast of confettie out the end of the barrel

Only thing I've seen lately is some 6.5 Carcano that hasn't been going off after pretty heavy primer hits. The cordite (that's right!) burns a pretty orange when you dump it out of the case though.

yeah you shouldn't have any issues as long as it was stored properly, I've shot some Hungarian surplus ammo in 7.62X54R from the late 40's-early 50's with no problem,