I friend of mine (who, as a shooting instructor for the Boy Scouts goes through lots and lots of reloading supplies) just related to me that his cost for reloading shells just about went through the roof recently. Evidently, mainland China is buying and importing base metals at an astonishing rate; so much so that chilled shot has almost tripled in price here in Colorado. Existing supplies of loaded shells are still fairly reasonable here, but the spike in the cost of lead will eventually affect them as well.
I'm frankly tempted to stock-up on loaded shells before this becomes general knowledge. Has anyone else experienced this price increase or heard anything else about this?