Tag Archives: bargains

Canning deal

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A little inventory, math, and inventory math told me that while I’m pretty well positioned on canning lids, it might be a good idea to lay in a few more jars. A couple dozen cases of 12, at least. So, since Saturday is my somewhat-usual shopping day I decided to hit a few places around town and find the cheapest price on cases of pint jars. I stopped after my second attempt:

Uhm…okay. I’ll take them all. So that works out to about $0.83 for one new pint jar, ring, and lid. I’m good with that.

I like the pint jars for their single-serving proportions. I do keep quarts around, of course, but the majority of the jars I have are pints.

I’m sure there are other brands out there but the stakes are too high for me to tkae my chances on Johnny-come-lately brands or, worse, made in China stuff. Ball and Kerr, in that order. Nothing else.

So I managed to put a pretty good chunk of my jar needs into the green. Thats good. I need to get down in the basement and do a thorough inventory of jars, lids, and bands. They are something I usually don’t track because a simple look at the shelves tells me there’s “a lot” of them, but I suppose I should be more precise.

Anyway, it seemed like a good deal and that it might not be a bad idea to take advantage of it. So..I did.

Just bring me all the guns you have.

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It has been quite a while since I did a gun deal that required me to literally back the truck up to the door of the sales venue.

And yet, there I was.

I wasn’t the person who came across this particular estate, but the person who did was nice enough to put me near the top of the list for buyers. The decedent was, apparently, ‘one of us’…with stockpiles of ammo, magazines, and that sort of thing. The widow decided to keep the storage food and a few guns for herself. The rest…was up for grabs.

Unfortunately, while I got some smokin’ deals on guns and ammo, they were guns and ammo that weren’t exactly in my logistics table. But, guns I don’t necessarily want have an uncanny way of transmuting into guns I do want…usually facilitated by selling them to someone and then using the proceeds to get what I really wanted.

What did I score? Hmm..some .40 Glocks, a Para-Ord .45 with a buncha 14-rd mags, a camo’d PTR91, and a Norinco milled Mak90 with several thousand rounds of ammo, a dozen mags and a couple drums. And at least a couple thousand rounds of .308 as well.

While I do like the PTR’s, I prefer the newer GI models that have the paddle mag release. I’ll sell this one and it’s dozen mags and use the proceeds to hunt down a newer GI model. The Glocks will get sold to get 9mm versions. The Para I have no idea what to do with. Might keep it…might not. The AK is actually pretty nice for a thirty year old gun, and apparently the milled receivers make them worth a nice chunk on Gunbroker. I’ll probably keep the ammo just because.

Still have to pick up the stack of big ammo cans which will go towards housing all the magazines I have here ready to go into the Deep Sleep.

Things I missed out on in the estate were .44 and .45 Ruger revolvers, some Bushmaster ARs, a nice Rem 700 .223 ‘gopher gun’, and a few other things like that.

RIght place, right time, wrong guns for the most part. But..wheeling and dealing is always fun so it’ll be interesting to try and sell/trade these out for the stuff I’d rather have.

I find it fascinating that since the ban on Russian ammo I have been falling into so much 7.62×39.

Scenes from a coin & gun shop

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Me: Still have that Wolf 7.62×39 ammo you wanna sell?
Him: You want it? You’re not gonna like the price.
Me: How much?
Him: Twentyfive cents per round.
Me: I’ll take it all.
Him: :::Suspicious::: Why are you buying all my ammo?
Me: Maybe I know something you don’t…
Him: Like?

And, yeah, he had no idea about the import ban.

Yeah, I had plenty (for my needs) of 7.62AK ammo but I can always resell this for a profit but, lets e real, it’s just gonna get bunkered.

For The WinCo

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Decided to cash out my CostCo rewards and see if maybe it wasn’t time to try a new venue…….

TL;Dr version: Winco: Emphasis on Win

The longer I identify and live my life as a survivalist (and, yeah, I’m gonna go with that over ‘prepper’) the more I am convinced that in 90% of the most likely emergencies I will face the most important things to have will be a) money (or money-like instruments) and b) food. To that end, I stockpile food and I sock away moneystuff. Winco will be my new go-to for food.

The Winco at the corner of South and Reserve opened up last week and a friend of mine recommended I check it out. Selection was broad and prices were very competitive, I was told. Okay, I go check it out. Ah…you had me at the food storage section:

Interestingly, those are not Gamma Seal lids on that top shelf but rather some sort of knockoff….so…lose a few points on that one. But, they have oxygen absorbers, which is nice. Also some fairly decent water storage containers.

Selection was quite good and prices were competitive with the local chain groceries, although noticeably absent were signs comparing their prices to Walmart and CostCo. However, the selection was much, much, much broader than CostCo and, for many things, the prices seemed better.

More importantly, for me, was the ability to buy cases of a product easily, and they also had a very large selection of ‘bulk’ items like pasta, rice, spice blends, etc.

Their ‘house brand’ canned goods seemed very reasonably priced but I need to try them before I commit to buying a case of something.

All in all, if you’re reasonably local to Missoula and youre the kinda guy who likes to stock up, this is a place you definitely need to go visit.

 

Remaindered meat trays

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Ah the meat tray. I’ve posted before about it. $20 for four trays of assorted dead animal flesh. A good way to get your animal protein for the next week or so, depending on how you cook and what your tastes are. As you also know, every other day or so I cruise the meat aisle at my grocer looking for the ‘remaindered’ meat….the stuff that is marked down 30% or 50% to sell immediately. Perfectly good stuff, but it needs to be used or frozen immediately. And then…on rare occasions…the two combine to create: the remaindered meat tray.

Normally $19.99….but knock off an additional 30% and now that deal looks pretty attractive. So…I’ll take ’em all. Why not? I’ve got a vacuum sealer and a freezer. So $14 each.

I literally have no room in the freezer now. Everything is repackaged, vacuum sealed, and ready to sleep until much later in 2021 (or beyond). Food security, baby.

Bargain – 12 CCMG AR 25-rd conversion mags, $199.99

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If youre like me (and Crom help you if you are), you like to have .22 conversion kits to allow you to practice cheaply with your guns. CMMG is having a sale on the 25-rd mags that go with their highly-recommended .22 conversion kits for ARs.

Don’t ask “Will this work with my Ciener/DPMS/Mattel .22 conversion?”. I don’t know, I don’t care. The CMMG is the best conversion kit for AR’s I’ve found so I’m not really inclined to go investigating alternatives.

A dozen 25-rd mags for $200. Free shipping.

Deal is for today only, as I read it. Go get ’em.

Right place, right time

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SNSTIW, minding my own business at a local shop, and I stumbled into this:

6x 40-round boxes of Wolf 7.62×39, a buncha loose 7.62×39, 1x box of 20 7.62×39, and two Magpul AK mags.

$75 out the door. Put another way, knock off $20 for the mags and the ammo clocks in at around $0.14@.  In the current market, that’s, like, eleventy jillion dollars worth of 7.62×39.

Right place, right time. Unlike my usual modus operandi.