Probably the biggest draw for people wanting to own one, and myself included, and not so much that it is such a great round, was the fact that the Russian ammo could be found cheap, and it is plentiful.
There is where the problem begins, since the cheap imported ammo has the hard primers it would tend to malfunction in the Handi's and Rossi's so they discontinued them rather than fix the problem, from what I understand.
The factory American ammo works fine, and they shoot well from what I understand.
I wanted to get one to use up all the cheap 7.62 x 39 I had on hand, after selling my SKS, but I solved that delema by going out and purchasing another SKS so my problem went away.