I was rumaging through some old boxes of stuff in the garage and I came across 3 full boxes of 30 cal. 165 grn. Nosler Partitions. A box of 50 sold for $5.25 at Warshalls in Seattle... but I have no idea how long ago that was. I think they came in a bunch of stuff that I bought at an estate sale a few years ago and never noticed them before. They look like a bronze jacket and have a lathe turned look to them. How do these perform compared to the copper jacketed partitions made today? Anybody know?

I have acquired a Nosler Reload Manual # 2, from a fellow locally that went to school with Bob Nosler here in southern Oregon...

But in the manual I noticed they use to have a lot of bullets with the Semi Pointed Round Nose Design along with some of the Spitzer configuration....

I sure wished they made more bullets with that nose design still... I think they are more effective than the spitzer bullets for on game performance....

Personally if they were originally that cheap, I'd save them for prosperity... there value will only go up... why shoot them up when you can just get current ones....

Sure would be great to be able to buy a box of partitions in 30 caliber for $5.25 once again!

cheers
seafire

I sort of "collect Nosler", if you will. I have all of the Nosler's loading manuals, old bullet boards, and a lot of the original-style Nosler Partitions, some of which go back to the early 1960s. I've taken a great deal of game with the old and the new versions, and have for over twenty-five years. Here are my conclusions:

The older bronze, machined-jacket Partition is a really neat-looking bullet, and it performs extremely well on game. It does what Nosler intended it to do in the first place.

The current Nosler Partition doesn't look as unique and spiffy as the old version, but it tends to be much more accurate and more consistently accurate in a wider number of rifles, plus it works just as well on game as the original version did. It's a better bullet than the original in every meaningful way.

I can't tell that the roundnose and semi-roundnose Partitions kill any better than the spitzer versions, but one things for certain, they shoot flatter and less effected by wind. For hunting, I'll take the spitzer Partition any day of the week.

AD

brienbo ----- I started shooting Nosler Partitions when that type bullet was all you could buy, and still have some on my shelves and they just happen to be the same 165's you speak of. I started hunting the larger animals and using the larger bullets. They will perform very well indeed and always will, by all means use then if you want to. Like someone else said, you don't have much invested there, if I were you I would keep then as antiques, that is what I am doing with mine, they will be worth something down the road. Good shooting.

I used a lot of the old style Partitions in .257 Roberts and .264 Winchester. Although you often hear complaints about the accuracy of the old machine-turned Noslers, they were among the most accurate bullets in these two rifles. I recently came by a box of .30/180's, which I loaded for my son's .30-06. No accuracy issues here, either, so he's going to elk hunt with these next month.

As to terminal performance between the two, I don't notice any difference.

If you have no particular use for your old-style bullets, they sell extremely well on eBay.

I'll trade you a box of zippedos for them.

I just got out Nosler #1 manual and they list four bullet types for the partition as follow: Spitzer,Semi-Spitzer,Round Nose and Protected Point. The color of box they are in will also date those bullets. The only thing I remember about the partittion was in the 60's or early 70's when they when to a new style jacket didn't perform as well as the old style but back then they were never known as a small groups bullet just good hunting bullets. The first Round Nose bullets were only made in 30 cal and 338 cal now they only have a 170gr 30cal bullet and the Protected Point is kind of like a Grand Slam flat tip. You may want to do a serch as some collect bullets so they may have a value in an unopened box. Well good luck