While visiting the land down under, I visited Tamworth Firearms, in Tamworth New South Wales to check on the prices of .22 ammunition. There was a plentiful supply, and the price for the Federal bulk pack of 525 wasn’t too bad.
At $42 (Australian) for 525 rounds, that may sound high. But the exchange rate of about 78 U.S. cents for an Australian dollar, that’s about $33.00 here in the northern hemisphere or about .06 per round.
Tamworth Firearms is laid out much like an American gun shop with one thing missing. There are no pistols to be seen. Oh, and airguns are treated the same as firearms.
The .22 magnum cartridges were much higher priced. At $23 Australian a box, that’s about 34.5 cents in American dinero. At the Eycamp farm, officially known as Medway, I was shown a carton of .22 magnum ammunition with a price of $75 per 500 rounds. That’s only 15 cents a round. Perhaps it was an old box, before the ammunition bubble, or when the exchange rate was more favorable to Australia.
The sales tax in Australia is figured into the display price. In Arizona it’s added at the cash register so customers can see how much tax is being added on.
I visited the Cal Farms Store in Arizona shortly before I left for Oz. The Federal 525 value pack was on the shelf at $24.95. With the sales tax, the Federal .22 Long Rifle ammunition comes to $26.70 per 525 bulk pack, or 5.08 cents per round compared to six cents per round in Australia.
The .22 magnum CCI ammunition was listed at 29.98 cents per round in Arizona. With the sales tax, that comes to 32.1 cents per round. That’s only a couple of pennies per round less than the magnum in Australia at Tamworth.
Ammo prices in Australia are reasonably close to those in the American market. Australia does not seem to have suffered from the bubble as much as shooters in the United States. That might be because the Australian shooters are just a small part of the overall market. Or because so many of them had already turned in their guns before the last ammo crisis hit.
Prices in general are much higher in Australia than in the United States. Gasoline is above $5 U.S. dollars per gallon. Food prices are higher. I paid $10 for a McDonalds Quarter Pounder meal with fries and a drink. With no refills on the drink. But for ammunition, at least, at the current exchange rate, .22 prices are comparable. Assuming you have something that will shoot it.
©2017 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.