One man's trash...

There I was, Knoxville, 2008...

Ok, enough of that. I was at the shop yesterday and I noticed there was a box full of old, patinaed ammunition sitting in the back. A cursory glance showed some odd stuff, though I didn't go rooting, till I asked about it.

It turns out an older lady dropped it off earlier; she'd said it was all corroded, that it had been her husband's and she didn't want it any more. Did I want it? Hell yes.

And with that, I immediately started rooting and getting my hands covered in white lead oxide (which is why the gods invented soap, and I don't chew my fingernails).

A snippet of what was in the box, in quantities of at least one and generally a handful:

.22 rimfire, heeled, extra long, unidentified
.32 rimfire
.32 WCF
.32 S&W long (LONG long, as in I'm puzzled it's that long and still called "S&W Long" long)
.38 ACP
.41 long colt, and a LOT of it
8mm Mannlicher-Schonauer
.41 swiss rimfire (VETTERLI!)
.375 H&H
A rimfire cartridge in the low .38 caliber range
.45 S&W short (maybe, may be a "bulldog" caliber, there's no headstamp and I haven't measured it, is heeled)
One fresh rifle cartridge, unidentified, with a deep inverted rim, around 11mm, with headstamp to investigate later

And there may be more, but we were leaving by then and the stuff is filthy. I'll be looking into perhaps what lightweight media I could use in a vibe tumbler to clear all the crap off of these, maybe I could get some good headstamps after that.