Are these bullets expired?

I recently bought a few different brands of 148gr HBWC for loading 38 special. I understand Star Bullets is no longer in business and these Star bullets are probably fairly old. The lube on them seems very uneven and feels sticky to the touch. I know some of you loaded thousands of these... Did they look like this back in the days? It doesn't inspire confidence and I don't want to find my revolver is all leaded up after a few cylinders! I'm interested in your opinion.



The box (Star Bullets)


All of them. BDX, Speer and Star. The Star look the worst for sure...

desben,
They look normal to me .I don't think you'll have any trouble .

Shot thousands of the Stars.  They always looked like that and felt sticky.

you can always wash them in odorless mineral spirits then coat them in 45-45-10.. It's what I did to my old star HBWC from the 80s

they worked fine that way

I'll bet they are the most accurate of the three brands.

Thank you everyone for the replies. I feel better now. As for which will be the most accurate, it should be interesting. I've shot a few thousand BDX and they were superbly accurate. But they are out of stock and the factory won't be making them for another month or so, which is why I started looking for alternatives.

Bullet diameters:
BDX: 0.360
Speer: 0.358
Star: 0.3575

Canadian BDX is sort of a Canadian branch of Montana Gold. Their HBWC was being sold by Montana for a while, but I don't think so any more.

While I am excited about being able to buy a .360 diameter 148 hbwc, I see the BDX box states .358 diameter. you measured .360 but they measure .358? whose measurement is correct?

I've measured many of them and they were consistently 0.360. You could contact the company to confirm. great bullets.

I would interested in them if they ship to the US. i've looked over several websites from up north but not much mention of these particular bullets. can you let me know when you hear they are being produced? The BDX website seems very out of date so I doubt they will update it when they make a run of bullets.

seems there would be a good market for them since Remington only makes their popular .360 version once a year. They seem to sell out in a weekend or so.

All I can find is Montana Gold used to be BDX.

I'll let you know. As I said, it will be a few months before the factory makes them again. As I understand it, Montana Gold used to be called BDX. They helped BDX Canada get started and setup. But BDX Canada was making the HBWC for Montana Gold. I don't think the market for these was very large; Montana Gold stopped selling the HBWC. Between the 5-10 companies that make HBWC available in the USA already, and the hundreds of casters, the market is probably covered. Some of the casters like Penn and Dardas will size to 0.359 if you ask. In Canada, it's different; we don't have access to Precision Delta or Zero. For HBWC, it's Hornady ($$) or Speer. So there's room for BDX Canada to make their product. There's also a couple of guys doing plated HBWC.

With Remington pretty much dead in the water, BDX might be an alternative.

Well, I got to shoot all 3... From what I can tell they all produce excellent results. Any perceived differences are in my head. A Ransom rest may give a different story, but my slow targets at 20 yards were equally good. I did notice that the Speer leaded the forcing cone a bit more.

My worries about the shoddy appearance of the Star bullets were unfounded. They're easy to load, they shoot great and leave my revolver as clean/dirty as any.