When is Ammo Too Old?
Russ Chastain 04.12.18
When is ammunition too old to be reliable? Many folks, likely the same ones who toss out any product once it reaches its expiration date, get antsy about ammo once it starts to seem a little old. But are their concerns well-founded? That’s what Paul Harrell looks at in this video.
For testing, he first fires some old 12 gauge shotgun shells made in the 1960s. Every one of them did its job perfectly. Next up was a cool-looking Polish PPS 43C submachine gun, with some 7.62x25mm Tokarev ammo that was made in 1952. Only one out of 60 rounds had a minor hiccup.
Naturally, this is not an exhaustive test, but it does illustrate that ammo doesn’t have an expiration date, and there’s no sense throwing it away just because it’s a little long in the tooth.
As long as your ammunition preps are stashed in a relatively stable environment, it will likely last for decades without any sort of trouble, or at least, no more trouble than it would have given you when brand-new (in the case of QC problems, etc).
Enjoy.