Nosler To Release .221 Fireball Brass “In a Month or Two”
Here’s good news for .221 Fireball and 20 Vartarg Fans — within the next five to eight weeks, Nosler-brand .221 Fireball brass will hit the market. We just got off the phone with Nosler, whose representatives confirmed that Nosler will be selling 100-ct boxes of .221 Rem Fireball brass very soon (item #10078). Product is expected to start shipping “in a month or two”. Nosler’s .221 Fireball brass is crafted by a third-party supplier, and then final-finished by Nosler at its Bend, Oregon factory.
We tried to find out the name of the third-party source without success. However, Nosler did confirm that this brass “is definitely NOT made by Remington“.
Expected retail for the Nosler .221 Fireball brass is $60.00 to $80.00. Online retailer Precision Reloading currently has the Nosler-brand .221 Fireball brass on order, with a stated retail price of $69.39 for a 100-ct box, product # NS10078. You’ll find the Nosler .221 Fireball brass on the Precision Reloading website, but it is currently listed as “out of stock”. Check back in a few weeks to see if the Nosler .221 Fireball brass has started shipping yet. NOTE: In addition to the new .221 Fireball offering, Nosler has announced that it will sell brass in three other new calibers: 17 Remington, .222 Rem, and 270 WSM.
As soon as its new .221 Fireball brass becomes available, Nosler has promised to send us samples. We want to see how the Nosler brass compares to Remington-brand .221 Fireball brass — currently the only type on dealers’ shelves. With Nosler’s reputation for quality, we hope the Nosler .221 Fireball brass will be a step up from Remington’s product. The Remington brass does the job but case weights and neckwall thicknesses are not particularly uniform, and the Rem brass is fairly soft.