By Duane Thomas
As you approach the wonderful world of a handloading, and ammunition in general, you might be asking yourself, “Why are some primers gold-colored, and some silver-colored, and is there anything to be preferred between the two?” Why, I’m glad you asked!
Before we go any further, in order to prevent diving down a really deep rabbit hole, let me make it clear I’m only giving here a brief overview of United States-produced primers, we will leave aside things like Combloc steel primers, and focus instead on what’s easily and readily available here at home.
Primers’ natural color is gold, because primer cups are, overwhelmingly, made of brass. The “silver” primers have been plated, again not always but generally, with nickel. Now, why do we have brass primers and nickel-plated brass primers?
We have brass primers because brass is an excellent material for the job. It’s strong and resilient enough to resist piercing when it’s hit with a firing pin then filled with gas pressure as the powder burns, soft enough it can deform enough to mash the priming compound, inside the primer, between the cup and the anvil causing it to ignite, when hit with the aforementioned firing pin.
We tend to associate “yellow” or “gold” primers with low-cost ammunition in general, and military ammunition in particular. Yellow primers are, generally, simply bare brass. There are exceptions, for instance certain ammunition meant to be used in extremely humid climates might have the primers sealed with a clear lacquer, so they’re not actually bare brass though they retain the bare-brass “yellow” look. But the vast majority of yellow primers are just bare brass.
The reason bare-brass primers exist, and are common, is because they work. While bare brass can be vulnerable to verdigris (or, as I call it, “that greenish-blue crud”) over time, the truth is, even if they do develop verdigris on the outside of the cup – and most don’t, more about which shortly – they still work. In military ammunition, brass primers have been used for well over a century. Military ammunition is either stored in climate-controlled ammunition dumps, in ammo cans that will generally feature a rubber gasket seal keeping out moisture, with a desiccant packet inside the can, or it’s issued out and used in short order.
Nickel-plated primers exist for long-term corrosion resistance, and are therefore much more common in ammunition, and primers, aimed – pun intended – at the civilian market. The ordinary citizenry might need to store ammunition and/or primers for years, if not decades, in non-climate-controlled areas, for instance an unheated/un-air conditioned garage in the South, with all the humidity and extreme temperature changes that entails.
With military ammunition, economy of scale matters. Nickel-plated primers tend to cost more than bare-brass primers, because plating the primers adds an extra step in their production. When you’re talking about adding even an extra penny or few to the cost of a primer, and you’re ordering billions of rounds of ammunition, that’s millions of dollars that would be wasted on something that simply isn’t necessary for the environments in which military ammo is stored and used.
There is a widespread – though once we really dig into it, not terribly logical – belief that silver-colored primers look more “premium.” Thus – again as a general though by no means all-inclusive rule – ammo companies’ top-shelf self-defense ammunition features silver primers. Not always. Famously all Federal primers are nickel-plated “silver,” all Winchester primers are bare-brass “yellow.” On the other hand, CCI-Speer makes both. The “yellow” primers go into their CCI Blazer Brass generic ammo, to keep costs down, but in the spendy Speer Gold Dot line it’s “silver” primers all the way.
The truth is, as handloaders, both can meet our needs well.
