50 Dying batteries: Can they be shorted by cardboard if humid enough?

dig out your magnefying glass, what's the use-by date on those batteries?

Bye. Jasen

So specifically in what part of the calculation did you find an error?

Or are you perhaps remembering the jolt you get when you 'test' a nine volt battery by touching it to your tongue.

jasen said something like:

Were they actually *on* those? There was something that looked like 1/2 pt. type, but I gave up on it.... :)

Yes, they do if you know how to read. Cheaper construction, lighter materials, paper labels instead of silk-screening. It all says "FAKE" loud and clear. US customs impounds tons of the crappy things every week or so.

Graham,

Maybe you've not seen them, though they may not say "Fake" in writing, they ARE "packaged" to look like a brand name. If you didn't look at them closely - you would buy them "assuming" they are "brand name". The ones I've seen, were IDENTICAL to Duracell.

There is a HUGE market out there for Knock-offs. Batteries, clothes, watches, CDs, you name it - there is probably one for it.

One possibility is they are "NOS", ie. new, old stock, like in 8-10 years old, sitting on some shelf in a little Walgreens store or something, and they finally dumped them. Electronic distributors also get these in 50 and larger cases, without the blister pack. Or maybe the eBay seller took them out of the blister packs because they said "best used before 1998".

J>I recently ordered on eBay 100 energizer AA batteries.

No, they're mostly dated 2011 and 2012...