The other day I was cleaning out a box of old stuff and I found this:
It’s some very old primers. I’m pretty sure I bought these in Moscow Idaho about 1975. This was long before I was into guns or had ever reloaded ammunition. I think I was going to use them to make an Estes rocket into some sort of missile with a “warhead” for the 4th of July. I never got around to it and all the primers are still in the package.
Herman’s World of Sporting Goods closed their last store in 1996, but I’m pretty sure the one in Moscow was closed many years prior to that.
Today a box of 1000 Small Rifle Magnum Primers cost about $35.00, if they were packaged and sold in 100 piece quantity, as in the picture above, the price would be just about double what they were when I bought mine.
Wow… Herman’s. Haven’t seen or heard of them in years, but when I was a kid on Long Island (yes, NY…) Going to the Smithaven Mall and hitting Herman’s was a big, big deal. Almost as big as my about every other year trip to LL Bean’s Clearance center in Freeport. It was an old, white, clapboard building that had tables all over with returns and seconds piled up. Great bargain hunting in the days before true “outlet stores”.
I’m also glad I’m not the only one who finds buried treasures when digging around in old stuff. A couple of years ago, I found my tip ups, spud and ice scoop in a duffle bag in the attic. Mind, We’ve been in TX since ’98 and left upstate NY (Ft Drum) in ’89.
Where the Heck was Herman’s? I remember Sunset Sports and Yellow Front and the gas station on the way out of town that sold a lot of firearms but Herman’s does not ring a bell.
It was where Moscow Food Co-op is now. On Washington Street just north of 6th. After Herman’s another sporting goods store was in there. Then something else for a long time. The Food Co-op moved in maybe 5-10 years ago.
Got it. I looked them up and they had Sunset which I remember where you describe. I bought two Smith Model 29’s there when I was in grad school.
The inflation calculator tells me that $1.79 in 1975 is worth $7.90 today.
A box of 1000 for $35 is a little under half the cost in 1975.
Shooting today is more affordable then ever. Yay!
What I was going to say ^ ^. Primers are now cheaper, but the value of the dollar has been further degraded since the ’70s.
It also depends on whether you use the official government dishonest measure of inflation, or an accurate one. In the past 20 years or so, the government has changed the way “inflation” is measured so as to understate the actual figure. Makes sense if you’re a government creep — that way, inflation-indexed taxes will increase when they should not, and inflation-indexed benefits and interest payments are not raised as much as they should be.