Surplus 30 cal tracers at Midway

General Ammunition Discussion
#1

As pointed out by Keith in a thread from a couple weeks ago, I wanted to point out that MidwayUSA seems to have added to the swath of .30 cal tracers they have available as of last Thursday. Midway activated a bunch of varieties to their inventory 10 or 12 days ago, and then more it seems last week around Wed / Thurs, and it is an odd mix of lots with U.S. and Colombian stuff. Some of them went out of stock within 24 hours, others are still available. I did notice that the prices crept up over the past few days from the $11 to $19 range, to the $20 to $39 range per 20rd box.

trac1 trac2 trac3

trac4
trac4.JPG815×513 41 KB
trac5
trac5.JPG813×577 46.6 KB
trac6
trac6.JPG815×585 55.8 KB
trac7
trac7.JPG815×603 58.1 KB
trac8
trac8.JPG817×601 52.6 KB
trac9
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trac10

#2

I received some of each brand, one of the brands the St Louis Ordnance Plant were crap, repacks, different Headstamps and the cartridges were dented and some not tracer.
On the other brands the cartridges were OK.
As stated on the web-site, the boxes are not mint cut tops.
I think the mint boxes were sold off at a higher cost earlier…
I use to get these at gun shows years ago for $5.00 to $10.00, I think those days are long gone :-)

#3

I was hoping that the photos they are using (very decent quality) would be representative of the typical quality of the boxes. I should probably know better, but fingers crossed.

#4

I received some of most of the types shown above, and the only ones for me that were 100% decent were the Twin Cities stuff with the perforated box top. The WCC and RA marked boxes came in with some boxes still sealed, but some not sealed. The unsealed boxes had tape over the top to hold cartridges in, and those were relative garbage. In one box, it had half of the rds not even being tracers, and had mismatched headstamps with most being of the correct era, but then there were 3 or 4 terrible looking FN 71 cased ball loads, and at least one with a struck primer. This tells me that at some point in Colombia, somebody refilled a bunch of messed up boxes with loose old rds, and they were then surplussed out to Midway.

There were some very nice tracers in the sealed boxes though, in excellent condition, problem being that you don’t know if your box will be sealed or not. All of my TW boxes with perforated tops were sealed however. Below is the mix of headstamps I found in one taped-over box. I had to polish the headstamps on most to get them to show up:

IMG_0001
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#5

Primers & primer crimps on the RA 55 & 54 plus the WRA are not original.

#6

Nickeled primers with a triple stake crimp and green primer sealant are typical of Colombian reloads by IM.

#7

Thanks for that Fede

#8

I complained to Midway on the garbage, no reply, I guess they do not care.
am surprised as they normally do not get involved in junk…
Not all bad but 25% bad is bad enough.