There's someone selling a brick of small pistol for $75.00 on Gunbroker, but I do not think I would trust them as they come from Argentina.
Anyone with experience reloading with Argentinian primers?
RCJ, I picked up a thousand of the Argentinian primers from a friend who bought a bunch. I normally shoot Federals. My guns have lighter springs but not super light. Anyway, no problem in the pistols but I had to turn up the main spring strain screw on my '73 just a bit (half turn, I think) to reliably set them off. I only shot 100 of them to try out, saving the rest for future needs.
Small rifle primers are almost the same as small pistol and can pretty much be used interchangeably (I just learned that this past year). Before I got the Federals, I picked up 5K of CCI small rifle. Also, CCI are not hard like they used to be. I shot 1K of the CCI small rifle primers with no problems. I turned up the strain screw a quarter turn for those, but don't know if it needed it or not. I do know a guy with highly tuned Rugers and rifle who had some light strikes with the CCI small rifle. Note: small magnum rifle primers are NOT interchangeable with small pistol, the magnum rifle primers are definitely harder (regardless of brand). And large rifle are different dimension (taller) than large pistol so not interchangeable.
The problem with buying any primers or powder mail order is shipping and hazmat. If you only buy 1 or 2K of primers, that adds up fast. If you buy a bunch of primers, those charges get spread out. I've bought about 1500 (oops. edit: 15000) Federals mail order and 5K CCI. Whenever I did, I also purchased some powder because one hazmat fee and one shipping fee takes care of both the powder and primers. And I lucked into a few thousand Federal magnum small pistol from Academy. I didn't even know they carried primers, but a friend called me from an Academy and told me they had them so I rushed down there. And they were only $80/K plus I signed up for an Academy credit card which gave an additional discount.
Yeah primers are expensive, but buy once cry once. I don't regret paying that much since I still get to shoot, and if they come down in price it won't be a drastic amount. If I do find cheaper ones somewhere I'll buy them to add to my supply.