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GunBum wrote on Aug 11^th, 2026 at 9:42am:

Tariffs maybe?

SteveStevens wrote on Aug 11^th, 2026 at 11:51am:


I don’t buy it (pun intended).  Brass coming from Europe is no where near as spendy as brass coming from Australia.  Sure, Europe is closer, but it isn’t 10x cost closer.

DTMunitions wrote on Aug 11^th, 2026 at 6:55pm:


Still don’t buy it (pun intended).  I bring a lot of stuff into the US from across the Pacific.  There are well established shipping lanes that are much more cost effective than putting a pallet into the belly of a 747.  And a 12.5% tariff is cheap compared to everywhere in Asia.  As for the small runs?  They do that on purpose to keep prices high.   

I was being sarcastic when I said I don’t know why Bertram brass is so expensive.

Somebody has to pay for the labor, the dies, the tooling setups and the brass stock, no matter if the cost can be amortized over 500,000 cases or has to be covered by 10,000.

I seem to recall reading that George Nonte had to buy 100,000 cases from Norma when he had them make the Nonte-Taylor Basic Cases he offered for a number of years afterwards for handloaders who wanted to form cases for their double and other obsolete rifles.  We’re kind of lucky that Bertram is willing to stick their necks out for the guy that only wants 20 or 50 cases for his weird-caliber rifle.  I just wish the quality was better.

If it takes your plane 3 weeks to get here from Australia, they are doing something wrong.  I can get a few dozen 40’ containers of explosives from central China to the rail head in Kansas City in 4-6 weeks.  That includes clearing China Customs, US Customs, the shipping time on a slow boat from China, and rail time on both ends.  Like I said before, there are well established shipping channels to get things across the Pacific, and that same boat makes a few trips a year to Australia.  If it takes 3 months to get a shipment from Australia, your freight forwarder sucks and you need someone new.

As for cost?  Shipping isn’t the long pole in the tent anyway.  If you check the Bertram distributors in other countries, the cost is comparable to Bertram brass in the US.  Even in New Zealand.  Their brass doesn’t move slowly because of a lack of demand.  Their brass moves slowly because of a lack of demand at their high prices / low quality.  Every time someone does a run of something rare but reasonably priced, like the last time Starline did .43 Spanish, it sells out very quickly.   

I don’t mind Bertram making a profit, but they don’t need to be able to buy a new Gulfstream V every time I buy 20 pieces of brass.

25 years ago or so, a bunch of us got together and asked Starline how many cases would we have to order to get 577/450 Martini case for a $1 a case. Their answer, 1,000,000.

In the ensuing 25 years, I wonder how many 24 gauge shot gun cases CBC  has sold-that ended up converted to 577/450? 

Probably not a million, but several hundred thousand wouldn't surprise me.

I wonder how many Starline would have sold if they had made a run?