And gone is a nickle loaf of bread, a 15 cent bucket of beer and dollar a day wages.
I keep gettin older but the "sun is the same in a relative way" 
One thing I do know,,I ain't sellin my loading gear an goin back ta buyin box ammo,,, 
Whatta ya spose would have happened if 2/3's of the old school loading community hadn't have panic'd and gone into "hoarding" mode a few years back,,would prices have stayed the same??
Un-likley,,I don't think my son will ever pay under $2 for gas either,,whatta ya gonna do? Stop buyin gas?? I think it's refered too as "got ya by the short hairs" 
Yea,I remember when you could get an SKS for 50 bucks at a local gun store and cheaper still if you searched around. My grandmother used to tell me how a can of tuna cost a nickle. Still,i make a heck of a lot more than my grandfather did. Things may also be alot more expensive now,but much of it is relative. The computers we type on can be had for less than 500 dollars. (of course 50 years ago,we didnt have them,but then again,we had to live with whatever reloading gear,or books or whatever else was stocked by local merchants. No internet for sharing information or for buying literally ANYTHING. ) Look at what 3 or 4 hundred dollars buys you in a TV now. Compare that to the old 25" color console that was so expensive you bought one for the living room and everyone had to share. Some things are relatively cheaper,some are relatively more expensive. Actually,on the whole,its demonstrably gotten better. It is a FACT that the standard of living has gone up since the 50s not down. We have more net available cash after buying the basics,even though things are more expensive. Imagine how much 40k a year would be to someone back in 1910.
As for reloading I got into recently. Part of the reason was that it was just hard to find a regular source of some of the calibers I needed,and then they were ridiculously expensive. Additionally I realized that I just did not have the money to shoot as much as I wanted. I put 200 or so into some Lee reloading gear. For 45ACP,the best price I could usually get,except perhaps by mail order,was about 33 cents a round. I can reload for about 2 cents for the powder,2.5 cents for the primer,and about 3-6 cents for the bullets if I cast them (depending on how well I do scrounging lead) or about 7 cents a peice if I buy bumblebee brand cast lead bullets from my local gun store. (a very good price I must say) Thats 7.5-11 cents a round to reload. If you assume that you get 10 reloads from each cartridge (you can get more than that if you load light,which also saves powder) then a bag costs 20 dollars so that's around 20 cents each so each reload costs 2 cents in cases. (cheaper if you scrounge used ones or come home with more than you left with from the range,in fact if you do,then the cases are essentially free as you will never run out.) If we assume that you will at least come home with a few extras and that some will last longer then lets say 1 cent per case. That means your paying 8.5-12 cents a round. Thats around 1/4 to 1/3 the price of loaded ammo.
I probably will "hoard" some supplies when I decide which powders I'm going to use a lot of.So far I really have not found anything that jumps out as "really good" to load 45 with. I can use Reloader 15 for my 7.62 Russian and my 8mm Mauser,but I want to work up loads for good accuracy and try other powders to see how they work. Right now I dont know what I would want pounds of. Brass of course I'm always looking for a deal on and of course,Ill take any lead I can get my hands on.
