I have LOTS of once fired military match brass in 30-06 and 308. It has been sitting in boxes in a garge for a long time, therefor the cases are no longer shiney, they are tarnished. If I were to try selling them, should I pop out the primers and run them through a tumbler? Or not waste my time and sell them as they are? Thanks for your opinions.

If its military it probably has a crimp on the primer. You will need a pocket swager to deprime them.

It doesn't matter whether you tumble them or not, but it will allow you to see what kind of shape its in. I would tumble before depriming.

If they are military once fired you would want to leave the primer in place. This is a good indicator that the brass is indeed once fired.
As far as the brass being dirty or tarnished I don't think many mil surplus shooters would be put off by a little dirt or tarnish. In fact too much tumbling will shine away the annealing residue.
How much do you have and what would you want for the brass?
PM me with details.

muck

PS You will not need any thing "special" to deprime the cases.
But you will need to remove the crimp at the primer pocket before you reprime the cases. This can be done either by cutting the crimp away. A case mouth champher tool will do quite nicely. Or you can swage the crimp. A swaging tool pushes the crimp out of the way.

I punch out the primer during the resizing process, then use a primer pocket uniformer (RCBS) to take off the crimp and straighten up the pocket, then a primer pocket brush, then trim, and then back to the tumbler.

Many of the potential custmers would mst definatly prefer to SEE crimpled in place primers for the reason stated above.


Tumble SOME to verify that they CAN be tumbled
and that the brass is not deeply corroded.

AD

Cool, thanks for the suggestions guys.

How come military brass comes with the crimp?

The rough handling in a machinegun for one.
More secure long term storage also.
There may be other reasons I don't know.

muck

As muck indicated, the crimp on miltary brass is put on sothat the ammunition can be used in machine guns, or in other rifles - ie, the 30-06 was made so it could be used in the 30 cal machine guns, and also in the M1 Garrand.

Same with 308 Win / 7.62 Nato. It was made so that the ammo could be belted for the machine guns, or single rounds for the M-14.

Because of the rapid fire of a machine gun, the chambers would heat up quickly and make the brass sticky. They were trying to eliminate anything that would cause a failure, and a loose primer would have been a problem.