The Russian Mosin Nagant Forum

I'm a newbie to Mosin Nagant firearms. I still have my 1st one in cleaning mode. I'm pretty well versed on M1 ammo both 30 Carbine and 30-06 ball but I don't have much if any experience on 7.62X54r. I was at Camp Perry yesterday taking in some of the CMP NM and strolling through Commercial Row one of the venders had cases of 7.62 for sale. I'm VERY GLAD the seller let me use his cart to drag it to my car !!!!

I'm sure a lot of you have gotten 7.62 a lot cheaper than this. I paid $240 for the case (880 RNDs). That's just a tad over 27 cents per round and way cheaper than I can find it around here and I've not been able to find any sealed cans available at that cost online either.

Here are the markings and I have no idea what it says only that it is 7.62X54r. Is there anything about this that I should be aware of ?





Thanks for any information
Chas

7.62x54r Russian ball (light ball). Comes from the Novosibirsk factory (188) and was made in 1974. You have 880 rounds (two spam cans) of good surplus ammo but it has corrosive primers, as does most surplus. I have shot a lot of this in the past, but not so much recently, as it is getting hard to find.

Thanks for the info. The vendor that had this at Camp Perry yesterday had 8 more cases left and 2 440 RND tins out. I didn't think the cost was too bad. If I get an opportunity to get back to Perry I may pick up another.

Does all the Russian surplus ammo have corrosive primers ??

All the Russian surplus has corrosive primers so clean as such.

You did good, check out ammo seek and you will find that you paid less than the going
online rate.

I'd say you did real good..

That's a lot of information loaded into a few numbers, letters and symbols. I'll get the case opened in a few weeks. The wooden crate looks to be in good shape so I would expect the tins of ammo are also. I've purchased 2 20 RND boxes of ammo just to have some for when it's ready to go to the range. In the past I've noticed a few tins but never paid attention to the cost. In the last few weeks since I purchased the Mosin I was only able to find the ammo in 20 packs at over 2 X's the cost of this crate.

Thanks again for the info !!

Wait, $120 per tin is a "good" (i.e. low) price right now? I may need to start selling from my hoard of tins if that's the case.

Yeah, sadly, the days of $40 tins is gone. Glad I stacked it cheap and deep a while back....

BenedictGomez wrote:Wait, $120 per tin is a "good" (i.e. low) price right now? I may need to start selling from my hoard of tins if that's the case.

I'm new to this ammo and unfortunately I had no reason to purchase any at those prices. All the places that I used to see tins at (didn't check the price) haven't had any tins. Even the online places I've checked have been out of stock. To me that cost seems pretty good at 27 cents per RND. Unfortunately it seems the last year or so most ammo has taken a hike.

Chas100 wrote:Unfortunately it seems the last year or so most ammo has taken a hike.

It's due largely to Vlad's wanderings into Ukraine, as that's where the vast majority of it was coming from.

entropy wrote:Yeah, sadly, the days of $40 tins is gone. Glad I stacked it cheap and deep a while back....

Remember the Polish lb from Sportsmans Guide? I think I paid around $60 fro the crate of 880... I should have bought 10.

entropy wrote:Yeah, sadly, the days of $40 tins is gone. Glad I stacked it cheap and deep a while back....

$40 for a can ???? That is crazy !! There are people paying more than that for a brick of 22LR.

I think that was a great buy! Does anyone hear like or dislike PPU ammo? Why or why not? I just bought two boxes to try in my Garand. Thanks, Wade

sardog72781 wrote:I think that was a great buy! Does anyone hear like or dislike PPU ammo? Why or why not? I just bought two boxes to try in my Garand. Thanks, Wade

I've used it in my Carbines and never had any issues with it. It's certainly not the cleanest or most accurate but it's good enough to use plinking with at the range. I've only used surplus HXP in my Garands so I have no opinion with PPU in them.

If you plan on doing any amount of shooting other than a few trips to the range you might want to go back and get at least another crate. I don't see much more of this coming back into the country in any kind of quantities to cause enough competition for price drops to anywhere like what this ammo used to sell for. Not any time soon anyway. That's a decent price these days and once it completely stops coming in and it will eventually you'll be buying steel cased commercial Russian stuff at a significantly higher price. PPU or Prvi Partizan is very good ammo. It's made nicely and the quality control is excellent. It's very popular. If it was junk it wouldn't be. Here's a link to what's available and how much it's going for now. http://gun-deals.com/list/ammo/7.62x54R These are a few mini charts just for a quick reference.

WeldonHunter wrote:If you plan on doing any amount of shooting other than a few trips to the range you might want to go back and get at least another crate. I don't see much more of this coming back into the country in any kind of quantities to cause enough competition for price drops to anywhere like what this ammo used to sell for. Not any time soon anyway. That's a decent price these days and once it completely stops coming in and it will eventually you'll be buying steel cased commercial Russian stuff at a significantly higher price. PPU or Prvi Partizan is very good ammo. It's made nicely and the quality control is excellent. It's very popular. If it was junk it wouldn't be. Here's a link to what's available and how much it's going for now. http://gun-deals.com/list/ammo/7.62x54R These are a few mini charts just for a quick reference.

If I'd have known the state of 7.62X54r ammo when I was at Camp Perry I would have purchased at least another 440 round tin. The dealer on commercial row had quite a few crates and also a few tins he was selling. I was actually surprised when I saw the Mosin ammo as I was looking for M1 ammo and accessories. After I got home and found out more about the 54r ammo I was going to try and get back but by the time I had the opportunity (it's a 2.5 Hr drive) most of the vendors had left.

I don't even remember the name of the dealers shop but he is in Ohio. I'll try and find it and see if he has an online website or if it's somewhere fairly close.