*Expired Batteries*

By Jaden

08 August 2004

To answer the subtitle question is…..YES! They are! About a year ago I walked into a local hardware store and noticed a bunch of orange stickers (meaning cheap) on the battery display. So me being me and always looking for a good deal I went to investigate. There were about 12 boxes of "C" size batteries for sale at $3.00 a box. Some expired in 2001 and others in 2002. This was spring 2003. I opened a box and took a look. The batteries were in original packaging. Hmmm… counted like 12 packs of 2 per box. (Actually I think there was more and I’d count now to be accurate, but they’re packed up somewhere) Anyway…let’s see here. 12 packs times 12 boxes. That equals 144 packages. So that’s 144 sets of batteries. That equals 288 individual batteries. So what did I do? I figured I’d take a chance and see if they were any good.

I picked up ALL the boxes and headed to the check out counter. $36 bux plus tax and some strange looks from the cashier later I had some 288 batteries and nothing to use them in.

Then I started looking for "C" cell flashlights. Couldn’t find any.

FUJI

Super Alkaline

Well for Christmas I got a couple of "C" cell mag-lights. Woohooo, I can finally try out the batteries. I put some of the 2001 ones in there and the same set is still going 6 months later. That’s with frequent use and Podunk getting a hold of the lights and playing with them.

Tonight I popped the batteries out of this one and checked the voltage.

Not bad, only down 2/10’s of a volt from 1.5

It still projects a pretty bright spot

Not too bad for batteries that expired 3 years ago.

So after this experiment I’d say it was to assume that 3 year past expiration batteries will still work.

Jaden