Airgunners in the US are very lucky because we have a huge range of pellets on offer! There’s more than 400 – yes FOUR HUNDRED – different airgun pellet SKUs * available at the time of this HAM survey – and more are being added every month. But what’s the average price of airgun pellets?
Today we’ll take a look at the airgun pellet market in the USA and try to answer that question.
It’s actually very difficult to answer this question exactly. That’s because – to make a fair comparison – it would be necessary to add Sales Tax for local purchases, whereas most out-of-State purchases will not have Sales tax added.
And then, the big online resellers, like Pyramyd Air and Airgun Depot, offer “buy four with one free” offers. Furthermore, some online purchases will attract shipping charges and others will not.
So how to resolve this and answer the question what’s the average price of airgun pellets?
Here’s what the HAM Team has done…
We took the basic selling price – the price shown on the website for all the airgun pellets sold by Airguns of Arizona and Pyramyd Air. Between them, that covers the vast majority of the market. Then we divided that price by the number of pellets in the tin. Simple.
Then we broke the pellet SKUs down by caliber and by material – lead or alloy – for the most common calibers – .177, .22 and .25.
The result omits factors such as free shipping, sales tax etc. But it does give an “apples to apples” comparison between different pellets. We can then give a reasonable indication of the average price of airgun pellets.
Here’s the results!
The average price of airgun pellets in .177 caliber.
More than half the airgun pellet SKUs – actually 54% – are in .177 caliber. That’s 208 different pellet choices for use in .177 caliber airguns.
First let’s look at .177 caliber lead pellets.
As we can see from the chart below, the Median – the mid-point between the cheapest and most expensive pellets in this analysis – is actually 2.7 cents. (We’ll equate the terms “Median” and “average”) for simplicity in the remainder of this investigation.
The lowest price for .177 caliber lead pellets is 0.9 cents each. This is offered by the Beeman Wadcutters and Daisy Precision Max pellets.
The most expensive .177 caliber lead pellets are the Gamo Blue Flame pellets at no less than 11.8 cents each in our analysis.
Obviously there are many less choices in alloy pellets in every caliber. This is clearly shown by comparing the number of lines on the chart below – each one represents a pellet SKU price – with that for the lead pellet prices above.
Here we see that the average price of alloy airgun pellets in .177 caliber is 5.8 cents each. That’s more than twice the average for lead pellets in the same caliber.
The cheapest alloy pellets in .177 caliber are the Promethius Dynamic PP1 pellets at 3.7 cents each. The most expensive are the Gamo Lethal pellets at 17.0 cents each.
The average price of airgun pellets .22 caliber.
135 airgun pellet SKUs are available in .22 caliber. That’s about 35% of the total.
Now let’s make the same analysis, taking lead pellets first.
What’s the average price for airgun pellets in .22 caliber? It’s 4.0 cents for lead. This is higher than for .177 caliber as you would expects. The pellets are larger and contain more lead, increasing cost for that reason, if no other.
The lowest priced .22 caliber lead pellets are, again, the Daisy Precision Max at 1.2 cents each. The most expensive are the Gamo Whiper pellets at an incredible 17 cents each!
Moving to .22 caliber alloy pellets, we see from the chart below that the Median price is 9.9 cents.
The lowest price per pellet is 6.0 cents. Again that’s for Promethius pellets – we’re starting to see a trend here! The Promethius PCP2, Sn2 and XP2 pellets all cost just 6 cents each.
The most expensive alloy pellets in .22 caliber are Gamo Platinum PBA pellets at 25.5 cents each. Ouch!
The average price of airgun pellets .25 caliber.
For .25 caliber, we’ll just try to answer the question about what’s the average price of airgun pellets for lead ammo. There’s simply too few alloy pellets available in this caliber to make a sensible comparison.
The average price is 5.3 cents.
In lead, however, the average price of airgun pellets in this caliber is 3.4 cents each for Gamo Pro Magnum pellets. The most expensive .25 caliber lead pellets in this survey are the Skenko UltraMag Metal Tip at 10.7 cents each.
So there we are. What is the average price for airgun pellets? Now we know…
* SKUs is the abbreviation for Stock Keeping Units, the retail industry’s term for a product. So, if the same pellet is available in different size tins – say of 250 and 500 pellets, for example – that would be two SKUs.
The post What’s The Average Price Of Airgun Pellets? HAM Investigates. appeared first on Hard Air Magazine.