Cheapest bbs
 

What are the cheapest bbs available? I've been using BB bastards and madbull bbs for the past few months but I'm starting to go through them at an alarming rate. I'm a very frequent basement shooter and I manage to pull about 500 rounds on average per day. At an average of $21.23 for 4000 rounds, it's starting to become an expensive habit. Anyone know of a cheaper alternative to these "brand name" bbs?

thanks

I use Bastards and love them, and my being a very busy gun tech that goes through bags of 0.20g BBs when chronying............. Bastards are great for the price. Maybe you just shoot too much, I know I go through a lot of shooting and testing, but just separate my field ammo (0.28g and 0.30g) from my waste ammo (0.25g) and test ammo (0.20g). And seeing as how Scarecrow is selling bags of 2000 BBs for $10 now, that's pretty damned good. There are other brands of BBs out there, but you'll still be sitting around the $20-25 range (after paying shipping/taxes) for 4000rds. Just be thankful this isn't paintball.

Would it be okay to reuse bbs? I'm shooting them into a mesh-like bb trap.

if you think bastard bb's are expensive your are out of your mind we USED to pay $30-$45/bag back in the early 90's with AMC prices, beside bastard bb's are better than the excel bb's

haha, if you think airsoft bbs are expensive, you know paintballers pay like $80 for 1000 Paintballs. The prices of bbs are very good.

Sure go ahead and recycle BBs, save you money on ammo for sure but make sure you have lots of money for associated gun repairs with the malformed bbs destroy the hop up rubber, debris off the bbs gets into the mech box and gums up the gears and shuts your gun down completely. IN SHORT, DON'T RECYCLE BBs.

Mud

And on my end, I've reused BBs no problem, I just put them all into a big steel mixing bowl and grab handfuls and sort out the good from the bad (very time consuming, but still). Never had any issues at all. And worst that could happen would be a torn hop up rubber.

I reused BB's once. One got jammed in the barrel and when the second one hit it there was a cataclysmic explosion. I guess that's what I get for using depleted uranium BB's.

Get your cheap BB's here:
http://www.ehobbyasia.com/

Cool, $8.50US for 4000rds. By the time it's in his hands, and easy $20-25 after shipping, duty, wait time, etc. Lol, still not making Bastards look expensive yet.

Shooting, be it airsoft, paintball, pellets, or real steel consumes ammo, which in turn consumes money. I too am a pretty avid basement shooter, and I accept my ammo costs as part of my activity. You can either afford to do it, of you can't. In the end, all decent BBs will end up costing you about the same amount of money, regardless what brand you get.

Personally, my choice of ammo is BB Bastard and Metal Tech. Both are pretty reasonably priced IMO, even when you compare them to "cheap" .12g crap you get at Cdn Tire. You get quality .2g BBs for about the same price.

dick around with wallmart BBs and game with the good stuff... thats all i can suggest

i get walmart bbs all the time i use a shit load of them never had any problems with them

No duty. I've never paid any border fees from eHobby, and I've made over 10 orders from them. I paid $15 shipped for 1900 round bags of 0.28's. And the wait time is not bad, 7-10 business days every time.

it can mess up your mags too, I know from personal experience

You've gotten lucky.

The next batch of .28 bastards are coming in at 2000 count at $15 a bag, so its basically the same but its available locally (ie: nationally).

This summer should be good in terms of availability at the field. I've signed up a lot of ass bastards (associate bastards) so in the Ontario and Quebec regions at the very least, most places you should be able to find a bastard at the game to buy from. That saves you shipping.

I do importing in significant quantity to get it as low as I do. For a quality product you're hitting the price/shipping/manufacturing ceiling on BBs. On the flip side, with the US dollar being on par, you're not seeing much difference in price between Canada and the US on the same quality product. If you're going to buy a subpar product just shoot in the basement, you might as well buy crossman .12's. I would not recommend reusing BBs - they do deform on impact, sometimes you can't see the deformity but its enough to jam your feed path. Keep in mind the clearance tolerances we're talking about here are upwards of .02mm - any amount of deformity when you've got that tight a tolerance is going to lead to potential jams or ripping of your hopup rubber. And AEG repairs are far more expensive than BBs.

Walmart / Crosman BBs are .12s and many have bad seams and deformities that can jam your gun. And they're about the same price as buying BB Bastard .2s that are as perfect as you can get in a BB.

If you can do $15 shipped I'll buy some, cause that would be the same price. But I don't think that's what you mean.

Not shipped. Once I have a ass bastard in Sask, thats another matter (75% of my customers don't pay shipping because they buy from a Bastard at a field at a game or at a regional store). But I sincerely doubt what you're buying is equivalent to what I sell, but each to his own, I'm not critical of those who decide to run other brands, my value pitch is not a pure price one and I don't cater to the lowest price buyer either. I keep my prices high enough to cover costs, stay in business and deliver a good product. Beyond that buying offshore, with offshore buying YMMV. All I know is I import BBs and I pay a shitload of customs duties and taxes on what I bring in. In small quantities through int'l shipping you may be getting under their radar, but those same rules apply to you as to me or anyone else importing, no matter what the quantity. They just haven't caught you yet.

EDIT: Yeah, followed your link. Those are Excel, KSC and something called 'ToyJet'...

'nuff said.

Heh, you can say that again about the insane duties and taxes.

$10 for 2000 rounds of .20g Bastards or $17 for 4000 rounds of .20g KSCs may seem to be a whole lot of money but actually, it comes down to $0.004 each time you pull the trigger.

Styrak: i provide BB bastards to the west coast and the prairies for the sake of keeping shipping costs down; if that helps...

i do love KSC BBs and you sell them at a much lower price than what i pay for
i got to keep you in mind next time i need BBs

I'm not bashing your brand or saying they're too expensive or anything. Never tried em actually. It's just that I bought the Toy-Jet 0.28's and they seem smooth and seem to work fine, so that's what I bought 2 more bags of. Maybe someday I'll try yours.

-1
Dude, I used to pay 120$ for 2000 rounds at paintball as a member.

Airsoft is more then 10x cheaper.. come on!

Same, Some Paintball places can even push to 200 per case and outlaw off field paint. Man Paintball licks nuts.


On that note Thanks BBS, Just got my order of bastards in today, attempted to PM you but your mailbox is jammed lol.

anyone use the biodegradeable 0.2 bbs at Wal-Mart? They seem decent in shape. I think it's around $16 before tax for 5,000.

DO NOT touch bio bb's they are shit bb's and explode on contact.

Testtube is correct. We had an incident last summer where a player was wearing goggles and a biobb lost its integrity on impact, shattered and the shrapnel sprayed his eyes with dust and particulate. Biobbs have proven themselves unsafe and in many places on Ontario are banned.

yikes!

OK, thanks for the tip. Won't use them in any games. I've been practicing with them and they do sometimes shatter in half, but only with very hard impacts. If it hits the side of a pair of goggles I can imagine the pieces going in through the vents and causing damage to the eyes.

I heartily disagree. I've used Bioval bio BB's in the past, and so far they have been the best BB I have ever used. Never shattered, biodegraded well, flew straighter than anything else I've ever shot, comes in pretty cool colours too (tan, OD, black, etc.). It's a shame we can't get them here.
Also on the flip side, I've had plenty of standard non-bio BB's crack, break, chip etc in various circumstances both while playing and during gun testing/chronying and whatnot. Most of it seems to happen when BB's hit each other, or a very hard surface like brick or rock. Doesn't seem to matter what brand they are either, and I've used everything under the sun.

You can disagree all you want Ibby - fact is there were over 50 witnesses to the incident. Its a matter of fact and public record.

EDIT: sorry thats a little harsh - yes I agree any BB given velocity and surface can shatter - no question. However in the many years I and others at the field have been playing, nobody has EVER seen something like this - the BB literally disintegrated into power and fine particulate matter with sharp edges - and this was on impact at the bottom of lens at normal distances using chronied guns. None of us have ever seen a non-biodegradable BB do that. Disintegrate against steel or concrete at close range, yes, but not at playing distances against normal safety gear used by a player.

well, the wal-mart ones have never shattered into powder nor more than two pieces, sometimes equal but more often not quite. It has usually occurred only at around 350fps from 1 metre away into a tiled floor. They do fly well too. I wouldn't want to risk anyone's health with them, though, so until further proof of safety/otherwise comes up I think it would be sensible to hold a moratorium.
Testing anyone? we could shoot them repeatedly into goggles from various angles.

For practice, they must be at the cheaper end so this may be a help to basement shooters. Check them out yourself with a micrometer, to satisfy they do no damage to barrels or hop-ups.

The walmart ones sound like a decent alternative when testing guns and basement shooting.

For playing games, I'll stick to the ones I know won't blind people.

Yes I know, I was there. Also, had the goggles in question sealed properly that would never have happened. They're not bad goggles, the space between the lense and goggle frame was about the same as Bolle T800's. Still, I've never liked the gap being there, for this very reason.
I stick by the Bioval BB's as well. Best BB I've ever used. And like I said, I have seen standard BB's crack plenty of times, including Bastards. I use Bastards pretty much exclusively these days, and lots of times I've found cracked BB's in the trap after chronying at home. All the higher end BB's I've ever used have had similar results. As you go down in quality, the same results are more frequent. I won't even touch the Walmart ones however.

The goggles in question sealed all around except where the nose meets the cheek, and lots of goggles have a small gap there depending on the person's face. The goggles in question also seal way better than most paintball goggles, simply because PB goggles tend to be made to allow people to use glasses underneath. I've tried quite a few paintball goggles before and found most to be having gaps on both sides of my nose, due to the bridge height. Benefit of the goggles worn when the BB hit it, they are curved on all planes, not just horizontally like PB goggles, increasing their strength well past what PB goggles are rated to, and seal all the way around (except for said half BB sized gap beside his nose. And Ibby, the goggles he was wearing that day have no frame, only lenses with foam around the edges, and arms with elastic strap around the head. I know what goggles he wore becuase I was the one who found them, tested them, and own a couple pairs.)

And, I think it's been discussed to death that chances are very high the bio BB that hit the edge of the goggles blew to dust becuase it was mostly likely 'past it's expiry date'. The player didn't have shards enter his goggles, he had dust enter his goggles, and had a watery eye, but what annoyed him most was the dust and shards that hit the side of his nose.

Nutshell, the goggles are still perfect and better than a lot of what's out there (more so for the price, since they are designed to protect the eyes against flying rocks kicked up by high performance ATVs). And the bio BB fired was either of shitty quality or had been sitting around exposed to air for longer than it should have. Good chance it wasn't a Walmart bio BB, but was a bio BB non-the-less.

And thats my point - because they break down faster (way faster) if improperly stored or accidently exposed to moisture, they are compromised and the player has no way of knowing. Additionally, those may have been fresh BBs - keep in mind that game we were practically swimming by midday with the downpour - the humidity level alone could have been responsible for premature loss of integrity. And therein lies the problem right there with biobbs.

Since we can't guarantee it, we simply don't allow them to be used up at WP field. Bowmanville made a similar decision that day on the spot and other fields have followed suit - so its not just up to the player, the field will also have rules around this.

Agreed. Even as a bastard I've said cheap BBs for the basement - so long as they don't damage your gun. If it does, it does not matter how good a deal you got on the BBs. I'll have a PTW shortly and only my brand of .28 will go through it.

BB Bastards are cheap enough you can plink around with them. $10 for 2000 is awesome.

Its all I have ran in my PTW and they have been flawless! Thank you!

thanks! i don't know where the OP is getting his BBs from...nearly $22 a bag?! Yikes!

enjoy those BBs :), i'm thinking easter holidays were slowing the parcels down. Sorry my PM box is always nearly filled to the brim and i forgot to clean it out yesterday.

You better believe it. Cheap and high quality is not an oxymoron.

You say wal-mart bb's are bad? Go to the Ukraine, buy a bunch there. Without reusing them you will be picking out the deformed bb's and chips of plastic. But I wouldn't recommend using either.

As of late i have been using Madbull's Mainly because i can get a bag of 4000 .25's for ~15 bucks from my local retailer. and they have been working great! I used to use ksc, but after acctually looking at a bag of bb's and seeing mold lines on them.....

i think those silver cola balls (candy) you buy at sweet factory will preform better than the Ukraine BBs haha.

Wait, how many sweet factories are there?!? 8-O :sad:

i used bastards one time before now im hooked great quality and cheap just placed an order for about 4 bags oooohhhhhhh think of the fun i'll have with those :)

I WISH I used 500 rounds a game!
I go through 1600 in a game with my M4 lol

I hit what I aim for, so 100-400 rounds per average gameday. Bastards all the way!

+1

... I'm not a machine gunner....

And I've gone through 8,000 (2 and a bit bag of KSC perfect .25's) in a game...

but I normally play a semi-only marksman role... So when I got full auto... I got a little happy.

I go through about a 1000 .25 BB bastard bbs in a 6 hour game.

BB bastard bbs are of great quality for the price but I used other brands that have tighter groupings.

I used to use the wall mart bio .2's then I finally tried MTG .2's and .25's and they are a million times better. The wall mart ones broke all the time, they were horrible.

No surprises there.

Walmart bbs are taboo.

Well being as the wallmart bb's were only being used in a clearsoft no worry's there. But now I have a kraken so I need to use better BB's and the MTG ones worked great with it

I must be really shitty on the field. I usually go through a G3 lo-cap and that's about it :(

Yeah tell me about it, I think I may fire off 204 rounds max in an 6 hour game. Thats 1 mag of 68 rounds in the AEG intially and 2 reloads after, I usually carry around 18 low caps, I dont even know why I bother.

I think my high bb use comes from taking on two or three peeps at a time on my own. And the two min respawn getting me back on the field.

BBs sales in BC ::http://www.bbsupply.ca/

That's cause you can't shoot for shit.

I've seen it.



:D

j/k man. No, wait - I'm not.

The most BBs I went through in a game was Op Drug Bust in Petawawa. I went through maybe 400 rounds, with about 350 of those being for support / suspressive fire. I'm not trigger happy. I'm always in full auto, but shoot in short 3-5 round bursts. I usually carry 8 lowcaps and 2 midcaps with me in a game, but haven't had the need for them yet.

or just order from a online store in the usa, or go in a airsoft store in the usa, during my last trip to florida, I ordered a bag of 10 000 TSD perfect .2g bb, for 20$, no kidding.
or just buy low cap mags, that will make youthink before shooting and wasting your ammo